Tar90 lr

Ethiopia: Power to the region, as mega-dams generate exports

• Nigeria Sunni-Shia proxy war • South Africa Zuma and post-truth politics • Congo The Majestic River

A SUPP

LEME

NT TO THE AFRIC

A REPO

R T N°90

N ° 9 0 • M AY 2 017

w w w.t he a f r ic a r ep o r t .c om

Debate

Not to be sold separa

tely

Is Africa’s development

an illusion?

The years of plenty were an opportunity for African countries to build strong economies and broaden the political space.

Progress is undeniable, but for whom?

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Algeria 550 DA • Belgium €5.90 • Canada CA$ 7.95 • DR Congo US$ 9 • Denmark 60 DK • DOM 8 € • Ethiopia 90 Birr • France €5.90 Germany €5.90 • Ghana GH¢ 10 • Italy €5.90 • Kenya KES 410 • Morocco 40 DH • Netherlands €5.90 • Nigeria 800 NGN • Norway NK 70 Portugal €5.90 • Rwanda RWF 6,000 • Sierra Leone LE 15,000 • South Africa R40 (tax incl.) • Spain €5.90 • Sweden SEK 70 Switzerland 9.90 FS • Tanzania TZS 10,000 • Tunisia 5.4 DT • Uganda UGX 10,000 • UK £4.50 • United States US$ 6.95 • Zambia 48 ZMW Zimbabwe US$ 4 • CFA Countries 3,500 F CFA • Euro Zone €5.90

GROUPE JEUNE AFRIQUE

Ethiopia: Power to the region, as mega-dams generate exports

• Nigeria Sunni-Shia proxy war • South Africa Zuma and post-truth politics • Congo The Majestic River

3

A SU P P L E M E NT T O T HE A FR I CA R E P OR T N°9 0

A S UPPLEMENT TO THE AFRICA

REPORT

N°90

N ° 9 0 • M AY 2 017

w w w.t h e a f r i c a r e p o r t . c o m

Debate

Not to

be sold separately

Is Africa’s development

an illusion?

The years of plenty were an opportunity for African countries to build strong economies and broaden the political space.

Progress is undeniable, but for whom?

THE AFRICA REPORT # 90 - MAY 2017 Not to be sold separately

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

GROUPE JEUNE AFRIQUE

Algeria 550 DA • Belgium €5.90 • Canada CA$ 7.95 • DR Congo US$ 9 • Denmark 60 DK • DOM 8 € • Ethiopia 90 Birr • France €5.90 Germany €5.90 • Ghana GH¢ 10 • Italy €5.90 • Kenya KES 410 • Morocco 40 DH • Netherlands €5.90 • Nigeria 800 NGN • Norway NK 70 Portugal €5.90 • Rwanda RWF 6,000 • Sierra Leone LE 15,000 • South Africa R40 (tax incl.) • Spain €5.90 • Sweden SEK 70 Switzerland 9.90 FS • Tanzania TZS 10,000 • Tunisia 5.4 DT • Uganda UGX 10,000 • UK £4.50 • United States US$ 6.95 • Zambia 48 ZMW Zimbabwe US$ 4 • CFA Countries 3,500 F CFA • Euro Zone €5.90

FREE with this issue: a MONEY supplement on finance and investment.

Not to be sold separately.

06 EDITORIAL At the tipping point

50 INTERVIEW Theo Sackey, Cenpower

08 LETTERS

52 BUSINESS

09 THE QUESTION

56 PEOPLE TO WATCH Out with the old...

BRIEFING

BUSINESS

12 SIGNPOSTS 14 PEOPLE 16 INTERNATIONAL 17 CALENDAR 18 OPINION Chester Missing, puppet political analyst

22 45

FRONTLINE 22 CONGO The majestic river The Africa Report takes an exclusive trip down the river that holds the keys to the country’s past, present and future

POWER DOSSIER 74 Regional powerhouse Ethiopia is selling power to the Horn and East Africa in order to boost its infrastructure

34 DEBATE Can Nigeria defeat Boko Haram?

COVER CREDITS: ILLUSTRATION BY ANTOINE MOREAU-DUSAULT FOR TAR

42 INTERVIEW Joseph Boakai, vice-president of Liberia

77 INTERVIEW Abdulazeez Abdullahi, spokesman for Kaduna disco

60

78 IPPs Can’t just wait for the government

ART & LIFE 82 LANGUAGE Kiswahili: friend or foe?

A look at the politics and culture of language in East Africa

44 ANANSI Does Europe’s right-turn matter for Africa?

86 GIFTS Prezzies for mum and dad

COUNTRY FOCUS 45 GHANA Galamsey gamble Accra says it can help big miners and small-scale diggers.

That is already proving difficult THE AFRICA REPORT

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N° 90

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68 START-UPS Kenyan innovators want more control of their new companies

73 HANNIBAL Spring in the air for the IMF and World Bank

30 NIGERIA Proxy warfare Saudi Arabia-allied Abuja continues to crack down on an Iranian-tied Muslim minority

40 ANGOLA Changing of the guard

66 LEADERS Koh Poh Koon, Singapore’s trade minister

72 INTERVIEW Edward Ndichu, KCB Group

POLITICS

36 OPINION William Gumede, South African academic and author

60 TAR DEBATES Is Africa’s development an illusion?

Panellists in Marrakech argue over whether a decade of high growth has really changed the continent’s trajectory

M AY 2 017

74

88 LIFESTYLE Belle Kinshasa and Mr Eazi 90 DAY IN THE LIFE Jamoru, a black-market fuel trader in Lagos

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6

THE AFRICA REPORT A Jeune Afrique Media Group publication

BY PATRICK SMITH

57‑BIS, RUE D’AUTEUIL – 75016 PARIS – FRANCE TEL: (33) 1 44 30 19 60 – FAX: (33) 1 44 30 19 30 www.theafricareport.com

At the tipping point

CHA I R M A N A ND F O UND E R BÉCHIR BEN YAHMED P UB L I S HE R DANIELLE BEN YAHMED publisher@theafricareport.com

I

t might not seem a big deal, but a snub is a snub. And, as countries start to speed-date in the computer age, such slights have consequences. In mid-April, United States secretary of state Rex Tillerson pulled out at the last minute from a meeting with the new chair of the African Union (AU) Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat. “African officials were incensed,” a former US ambassador to the AU told reporters.

It may just have been a mistake.

After all, the administration of Donald Trump has no interest in Africa beyond stopping immigration. The little interest that remains is focused on ‘war on terror’ programmes. Mahamat comes from Chad, where he is also the foreign affairs minister, and Chad has won plaudits for its rugged clashes with Islamist rebels in Mali and beyond.

But all the signs of a country folding in on itself are there. At the start of this bizarre political year, China’s President Xi Jinping turned history on its head and flew to Davos to burnish his credentials as the leading ambassador for globalisation. Weeks earlier, Chinese officials took up a string of top diplomatic and security posts at the UN. In other multilateral forums, Beijing’s diplomats are pressing for radical reform – not the overthrow – of the international system.

Meanwhile, Trump stayed at home(s) in Washington DC and Mar-a-Lago, glowering and appointing a cabinet of billionaires, the richest ministerial team in history but also one of the most nationalistic and protectionist. A quarrel at the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank revealed another

E X E CUT I VE P UB L I S HE R JÉRÔME MILLAN

side of the Trump administration’s step back from international institutions. Officials in the White House seem hostile to any attempt to put extra money in the World Bank – one of the few institutions outside of the African Development Bank putting serious money into African infrastructure. And in March, the White House said it would slash foreign aid by a third.

But as the US melts away, China steps forward. In 2015, Beijing and its allies created a rival to the World Bank called the New Development Bank. Its first regional office is in South Africa.

Chinese companies are Economic also investing $10bn in both South African and diplomacy Moroccan car manufacis fast turing sites. replacing Indeed, economic diplomacy is fast rethe security placing the security diplomacy of diplomacy of Africa’s Cold War past. And it Africa’s Cold is not a moment too War past soon. The continent, as Mo Ibrahim hammered home during his foundation's governance weekend in Marrakech, is at a tipping point (see page 60).

In particular, the size of Africa’s youth population will almost double between now and 2050, from 230 million to 452 million people.

The problem is that growth in Africa is not generating jobs at the same pace. Meanwhile, terror attacks on the continent have grown 1,000% over the past decade.

Ensuring that Africa maximises the advantages of this adventurous, entrepreneurial and bettereducated youthful population must be an overwhelming priority, says Ibrahim – with or without recalcitrants in the White House.

THE AFRICA REPORT

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M A R K E T I NG & D E VE L O P M E NT ALISON KINGSLEY‑HALL E D I T O R I N CHI E F PATRICK SMITH M A NA G I NG E D I T O R NICHOLAS NORBROOK editorial@theafricareport.com A S S O CI AT E E D I T O R MARSHALL VAN VALEN B US I NE S S E D I T O R MARK ANDERSON E D I T O R I A L A S S I S TA NT OHENEBA AMA NTI OSEI R E G I O NA L E D I T O R S CRYSTAL ORDERSON (SOUTHERN AFRICA) BILLIE ADWOA MCTERNAN (GHANA) S UB - E D I T O R S ALISON CULLIFORD, ERIN CONROY P R O O F R E A D I NG KATHLEEN GRAY A RT DI R E CT O R MARC TRENSON DESIGN VALÉRIE OLIVIER (LEAD DESIGNER) SYDONIE GHAYEB CHRISTOPHE CHAUVIN (INFOGRAPHICS) CAMILLE CHAUVIN R E S E A R CH SYLVIE FOURNIER P HO T O G R A P HY PIERANGÉLIQUE SCHOULER SAMUEL BOUAROUA SALES SANDRA DROUET Tel: (33) 1 44 30 18 07 – Fax: (33) 1 45 20 09 67 sales@theafricareport.com CONTACT FOR SUBSCRIPTION: Webscribe Ltd Unit 4 College Road Business Park College Road North Aston Clinton HP22 5EZ United Kingdom Tel: + 44 (0) 1442 820580 Fax: + 44 (0) 1442 827912 Email: subs@webscribe.co.uk ExpressMag 8275 Avenue Marco Polo Montréal, QC H1E 7K1, Canada T : +1 514 355 3333 1 year subscription (10 issues): All destinations: €39 ‑ $60 ‑ £35 TO ORDER ONLINE: www.theafricareportstore.com A D VE RT I S I NG D I F CO M INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING AND COMMUNICATION AGENCY 57‑BIS, RUE D’AUTEUIL 75016 PARIS ‑ FRANCE Tel: (33) 1 44 30 19‑60 – Fax: (33) 1 44 30 18 34 advertising@theafricareport.com PRINTER: SIEP 77 ‑ FRANCE N° DE COMMISSION PARITAIRE : 0720 I 86885 Dépôt légal à parution / ISSN 1950‑4810 THE AFRICA REPORT is published by GROUPE JEUNE AFRIQUE

8

LEARNING TO LIVE WITHOUT NIGERIA

T

MOROCCO

THE CASE

SPECIAL FOR

DEVELOPMENT

• Nigeria China gets railway rolling • South Africa Christo Wiese, Monopoly money • São Tomé Big plans for a small island

he troubles in Benin highlight the realities Nana Akufo-Addo of regional integration in West Africa [‘Trade: When Nigeria sneezes, Benin catches a cold’, TAR89 Apr 2017]. Borders are really just artificial lines drawn in the sand. Despite efforts by customs and order agencies to limit trade across borders, the regions are so well integrated that it would be surprising if they didn’t trade. It is therefore expected that the economic troubles in Nigeria would lead to troubles in Benin as well. I am guessing Cameroon, Niger, and perhaps other West African countries are also feeling the pinch. Although it is probably worse in Benin given that the economy is reliant on facilitating trade. It is, however, a bit unwise to have an economy so dependent on trade with a neighbour that is, at least on the policy front, protectionist and hostile to trade. On that note, the effort to diversify away from trade with Nigeria is the smart thing to do.

Nonso Obikili, Economist, Nigeria w w w.t h e a f r i c a r e p o r t .co m

N ° 8 9 • A P R I L 2 017

A man in a hurry

Taking over a country held back by debt and graft, Ghana’s new president promises to break with the old colonial economy, and pledges free secondary schooling for all

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Algeria 550 DA • Belgium €5.90 • Canada CA$ 7.95 • DR Congo US$ 9 • Denmark 60 DK • DOM 8 € • Ethiopia 90 Birr • France €5.90 Germany €5.90 • Ghana GH¢ 10 • Italy €5.90 • Kenya KES 410 • Morocco 40 DH • Netherlands €5.90 • Nigeria 800 NGN • Norway NK 70 Portugal €5.90 • Rwanda RWF 6,000 • Sierra Leone LE 15,000 • South Africa R40 (tax incl.) • Spain €5.90 • Sweden SEK 70 Switzerland 9.90 FS • Tanzania TZS 10,000 • Tunisia 5.4 DT • Uganda UGX 10,000 • UK £4.50 • United States US$ 6.95 • Zambia 48 ZMW Zimbabwe US$ 4 • CFA Countries 3,500 F CFA • Euro Zone €5.90

GROUPE JEUNE AFRIQUE

just all about the parents and family.

The Nigerian wedding industry has become recognised internationally and it’s becoming the biggest trendsetter in the event industry worldwide now, with African weddings outside the continent also reflecting that. I’m glad and extremely delighted to see this industry evolve, grow, empower and bring smiles to people’s faces and lives.

Funke Bucknor-Obruthe, CEO and founder, Zapphaire Events Group

TANZANIA: NOT SO OPEN FOR INVESTMENT

In your article ‘East Africa: Tanzania's power play’ [TAR88 Mar 2017] you write that Tanzania is willing to open to the outside world to attract foreign capital. Is Tanzania seriously willing FEMINISM IS GLOBAL WEDDING TRENDSETTERS to attract foreign investment when it has proposed to lay down tough conditions Why on earth would feminism be Absolutely loved reading the article for foreigners who wish to acquire un-African [‘The Question’, TAR89 April ‘Weddings: The big contract’ [TAR88 land for investment? This will not help 2017]? It’s a global issue, it has nothing Mar 2017], especially [as I am] one to create a conducive environment to do with how women dress or behave. of the pioneers of event and wedding for trade development and investment However, it has all to do with how planning in Nigeria. Weddings reflect ventures. What Tanzania needs is women are valued as fellow citizens, our culture, our warmth and to create an environment embracing in their jobs and in the family. Men hospitality. They also are extremely inclusivity with neighboring countries and women need to share in all areas emotional, and you have to learn in bilateral negotiations and a process of life, particularly in family life. Children how to be as diplomatic as possible. of reforms identifying technical barriers need fathers who are present and It’s the most special day in the lives to free trade. It also needs to promote caring. They need male role models, of the couple, their parents and, of flexible inward direct investment and they need female role models who course, the guests. Nothing, absolutely policies without imposing restrictions, look at education as essential because nothing, must go wrong. As the to encourage private sector it leads to a fulfilled life contributing to ceremony, reception and afterparty investments that will help create more the development of society, whether in have become more elaborate, they have employment opportunities and raise Europe or Africa or any other continent. also become more intimate and more the living standards of the local people.

Margareta L. Walker via Facebook about the couple being happy and not Kokil K. Shah, Kenya HOW TO GET YOUR COPY OF THE AFRICA REPORT

On sale at your usual outlet. If you experience problems obtaining your copy, please contact your local distributor, as shown below.

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ADVERTISERS’ INDEX MAIN ISSUE: UNITED BANK FOR AFRICA p 2; LIQUID TELECOM p 4-5; MAZAGAN BEACH RESORT p 7; STANDARD BANK p 10-11; BARCLAYS BANK ABSA p 20-21; SAHAM FINANCES p 39; SOCIETE GENERALE GHANA p 49; AVIATION HANDLING SERVICES p 51; GHANDOUR COSM. SCENT OF AFRICA p 53; O&G COUNCIL NOC p 55; TAR MONTS NIMBA SUBS p 55; ORSAM ORTEC GROUP p 57; ACTIVA INT. INSURANCE COMP. p 58-59; ABAX CORP. SERVICES p 65; CHANNELS TV p 71; BIOTHERM ENERGY p 76; ECOBANK NIGERIA p 80-81; DSTV MEDIA p 91; ORYX ENERGIES p 92 MONEY SUPPLEMENT: UNITED BANK FOR AFRICA p 2; STANDARD BANK p 4-5; BARCLAYS BANK ABSA p 8-9; ECOBANK NIGERIA p 20-21; TAR SUBS p 27; GHANDOUR COSM. SCENT OF AFRICA p 28 THE AFRICA REPORT

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9

Efe Michael Ojeba is the latest Nigerian to shoot to fame and fortune after competing in Big Brother Nigeria. But some think the constant streaming of ‘bad behaviour’ by TV reality shows could be detrimental to society.

Does reality TV have a negative influence on youth?

Yes BISHOP JOHN H. MAMBO Founding president, Chikondi Foundation, Nyamphande Orphanage, Zambia

In my view, housemates who go into the Big Brother house – albeit most of them coming from very decent homes – end up losing their moral values. You sometimes see the housemates having intercourse openly and things of that nature, which is considered disrespectful in our African culture. In Zambia today, the consumption of alcohol is one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa, which was not the case before the youth started watching all these shows. They are now involved in all sorts of sexual activities and immorality, mainly because they want to experience what they have seen happening on these shows.

One of the participants from Zambia came from a very grounded and respected family, but after taking part in the show his future was destroyed. I believe the only person who benefits is the ultimate winner, who ends up with the cash prize. The other participants are left with nothing other than tainted images. I’m not against the concept of reality TV, but I think it should be restricted to behaviour that doesn’t disrespect African culture. I wouldn’t mind my own daughter taking part, but I wouldn’t allow her to be showing her nakedness on national television. I’m not against anything that will advance maturity or sex education, but I’m against immorality because that encourages the youth to go out and test what they cannot handle.

No BRIDGET BELL-GAM Fashion designer/ illustrator, Nigeria

Reality TV shows are certainly monopolising our screens these days. While some of the shows are outright awful – some would even argue that they are offensive and exploitative – they create a platform for so many controversial stigmas in our society. They provoke conversations that get us talking. Let’s take Big Brother Nigeria as a typical case study.

The show was able to bring out the talent in most of the participants, talents they did not even believe they had. The platform was able to give them exposure, and the youth who participated in the show are already off the labour market. Our own Bisola, who also took part in the show, was able to prove why the girl child should be educated.

Her strong point of view has also earned her a place to speak to the world and the international community. I think people love to demonise reality TV as an evidence of decay, especially in Africa, but have these people taken their time to watch one lately? They aren’t all vehicles of schadenfreude and exploitation. Even if they were, what is wrong in that? Even Jersey Shore has its purpose. Contrary to popular belief, reality TV serves a variety of useful and important functions.

While many think that reality TV is nothing more than a series of freak shows, some serve the greater good. A good deal of what is on TV can be very useful to the viewer, especially the youth, making them believe in themselves and bringing out the talents in them.

THE AFRICA REPORT

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Much of the ‘reality’ is manufactured […] and this means that it’s often bad behaviour because good behaviour is not exciting to watch.

So kids normalise this and incorporate it into their own behaviour.

Nan Warner Reality TV shows such as BB Naija and the likes poise distractions to citizens from issues of greater importance. Now, not that there’s something particularly wrong with hosting reality shows; the problem is that the hosts of these shows are overtly compromising the gravity of the moment in Nigeria – giving millions to just one person for contesting favourably at things of no significance but fun in the public eye, especially when these millions could be used to help the economy by creating jobs to slash the spate of unemployment in Nigeria.

Emmanuel Iyele Look at the people drowning in ‘drama and reality’. It is cognitive dissonance training - getting stabbed, seeing the blood and refusing to ‘see’ it.

Michael Nicklette Poor people become poorer while those in the limelight get advantages like that. If you could donate such money to a charitable organisation or an orphanage, it would go a long way.

Prospa Prosper

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Authorised financial services and registered credit provider (NCRCP15).

The Standard Bank of South Africa Limited (Reg. No. 1962/000738/06). Moving Forward is a trademark of The Standard Bank of South Africa Limited. SBSA 263708 04/17.

“Partnerships?”

“Communities.”

12

KENYA A double win for Kenya in the Boston

Marathon on 17 April, where Edna Kiplagat was the fastest woman and Geoffrey Kirui the fastest man.

NIGERIA Authorities were left

scratching their heads after finding $45m in a flat in the Ikoyi area of Lagos.

ZIMBABWE Opposition leaders Morgan

Tsvangirai and Joice Mujuru formed a coalition to face President Mugabe in elections in 2018.

?

In conjunction with GeoPoll, The Africa Report asked 100 Nigerians: Do you think the recent news of migrant slave markets in Libya will deter new attempts to emigrate across the Sahara to Europe?

39.2%

SOURCE: GEOPOLL

No

Yes

GeoPoll is the world’s largest mobile surveying platform and sample provider in Africa, enabling companies and organisations to gather quick, accurate and in-depth insights. To conduct your own mobile survey using GeoPoll’s easy-to-use platform visit research.geopoll.com

DEMOGRAPHICS THE FUTURE WILL BE YOUNG AND AFRICAN

SOURCE: MO IBRAHIM FOUNDATION

A one-sided 2016 peace deal has left conflict festering in South Sudan

As births in other regions are slowing, it is predicted that nearly half of all people under the age of 25 will be Africans by 2100. Many governments are now scrambling to lay the groundwork to create jobs and build infrastructure to accommodate those new arrivals.

Africa Asia Europe Latin America/Caribbean North America

34%

2050

452 million

SOUTH SUDAN

No-one at the table

W

ith famine spreading, no effective peace mediation, an intransigent government and fracturing rebel groups, South Sudan continues to fester. The UN Panel of Experts, which is due to close up shop in July, has delivered a scathing final report about why conflict persists.

It rubbishes the 2016 peace deal between President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Taban Deng Gai, saying it is one-sided and excludes many of the war’s belligerents, including rebel leader and former vice-president Riek Machar. All major groups have committed serious atrocities.

While the UN is keen to roll out a 4,000-strong protection force, the

government has fought to keep it from operating in Juba. The body heading regional mediation efforts, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, has also suffered from schisms, with member governments pushing their own interests rather than showing a united front.

The UN panel warns of the dangers of this status quo: “Political and tribal fractures […] have become the default strategy for some of the country’s most prominent political and military figures.

This strategy undermines organised, collective resistance to these actors’ control and ensures that they maintain their dominance and access to the country’s resources.”

THE AFRICA REPORT

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JASON PATINKIN/AP/SIPA

60.8%

BRIEFING 13

NIGERIA Aviation minister Hadi Sirika (centre),

SOUTH AFRICA After his sacking

a former pilot, reopened Abuja airport after a six-week closure for rehab work on the runway.

of finance minister Pravin Gordhan, pressure mounts on President Zuma.

GUINEA Conakry, the Guinean capital, began its year

as UNESCO World Book Capital in April; it plans to build a mediatheque in every administrative district.

CHARLES KRUPA/AP/SIPA; EFCC NIGERIA; JEKESAI NJIKIZANA/AFP; SUNDAY/AGHAEZE; SIPHIWE SIBEKO/REUTERS; CELLOU BINANI/AFP

“The ownership of

COMMODITIES WAITING FOR THE REBOUND

wealth and assets remains concentrated in the hands of a small part of the population. opulation.

This must change.”

Energy

Agriculture

FINANCE RISKIER BETS Governments have been racking up more debt, and credit rating agencies are worried about their ability to repay. South Africa’s credit rating was downgraded to below investment grade – to junk status – in March after the sacking of finance minister Pravin Gordhan. Senegal is going back to the eurobond market – where debt is issued in a foreign currency – in April.

Namibia South Africa Seychelles Senegal Kenya Côte d’Ivoire Gabon Rwanda Nigeria Ethiopia Cameroon Angola Zambia Ghana DRC Rep. of Congo Mozambique

110 90 70

SOURCE: WORLD BANK

PEGGY NKOMO/DEPT. HOME AFFAIRS

130

South Africa’s new finance minister Malusi Gigaba said tthat the onomic African National Congress’s policies of ‘radical eco n office. transformation’ would be some of his top priorities while in

50 30 10 2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

The World Bank predicts that 2016 was the low point of the commodity price crash and that a modest recovery is set to continue until at least 2020.

AIRLINES ETHIOPIAN PLANS TO SOAR Income ($bn) Fleet (planes) Destinations Number of passengers (millions)

in 2025

10

150

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-5

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

1

SOURCE: ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES

-6

SOURCE: BLOOMBERG

Now

-10 -9 -8 -7 Levels relative to junk status THE AFRICA REPORT

Metals $ nominal, 2010=100

2.4

120

85 90 7.6

22

14

Prime Minister Saadeddine El Othmani heads a parliament in which his party is not dominant

ISLAMIST ON THE RISE 16 January 1956 Born in Inezgane 1986 Earned a doctorate in medicine from Université Hassan II de Casablanca 2004 Became leader of the Islamist Parti de la Justice et du Développement

FADEL SENNA/AFP

3 January 2012 Named foreign affairs minister 5 April 2017 Became prime minister, leading a coalition government

SPOTLIGHT

Saadeddine El Othmani The new Moroccan prime minister has a weaker hand than his predecessor but is keen on maintaining the Islamists’ influence on government in the face of interventions from the Palace WITH TWO DEGREES IN MEDICINE and three in theology, Morocco’s new prime minister, Saadeddine El Othmani, is a thinking Islamist with a reputation for listening and consensus building. The 60-year-old psychologist’s talents could be put to an extreme test as he seeks to stamp his authority on a government filled with opponents and to overcome criticism from within his Parti de la

Justice et du Développement (PJD) and wider Islamist movement.

King Mohammed VI replaced Abdelilah Benkirane – who was premier since 2011 – in mid-March following six months when the PJD leader was unable to form a government. This was widely seen as a victory for the Palace in its bras de fer (arm wrestling) with the Islamists. The King’s decision

to immediately invite the PJD’s number two to form a government was seen as a masterstroke by the Islamist party’s many opponents, at a stroke keeping Moroccan politics within the constraints of the 2011 constitution while replacing the populist Benkirane with Othmani, who is widely seen as a less potent force.

Othmani’s previous brief entry into government, as foreign minister in Benkirane’s first government, was not seen as a success. Non-PJD ministers are sceptical about his political abilities. Critics within the PJD pose another challenge; they “may include [Benkirane], depending on his mood”, one Islamist source observed.

With only 125 seats, 31.7% of the total, and an even lower percentage of the popular vote, the PJD emerged as the winner in last October’s general election but it is far from dominant

“Where is the voice of the African Union? Why are they not standing up for […] their fellow African brothers and sisters? ”

“What we call violence between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria is really the failure of law and order. ”

Priti Patel, the UK’s international development secretary, on what she calls the continued “genocide” in South Sudan.

Nigeria’s Bishop Matthew Kukah said people should not be distracted by headlines about a “Christian-Muslim conflict”.

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AFP

The 38-year old Nigerian pilot made history in April when he became the first African to fly solo around the world. His journey took him to more than 15 countries on five continents.

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JEMIMA SUMGONG The Kenyan long-distance runner and Olympic gold medallist failed a drug test for the London Marathon in early April, leading to increased suspicions about doping in the Kenyan athletics field.

CATHIA LAWSON-HALL The senior banker at Société Générale, who is the first woman of African origin to have a seat on the board of French media giant Vivendi, won a Club XXIe Siècle award in April for her business leadership.

Zambian oppositionist Hakainde Hichilema denounces his arrest for treason for blocking a presidential motorcade.

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The Tanzanian rapper, who goes by the stage name of Nay wa Mitego, released a song that was deemed critical of government. He was arrested and then released after President John Magufuli intervened.

ADEMOLA “LOLA” ODUJINRIN

“This guy, Lungu, he wants to kill me. He’s basically broken into my house and put his men around ” THE AFRICA REPORT

EMMANUEL ELIBARIKI

UNIDO; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; FRANÇOIS MARECHAL

Jon Marks

VERA SONGWE In April, the Cameroonian economist left her West and Central Africa post at the International Financial Corporation to become the first woman to lead the UN Economic Commission for Africa.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; KARWAI TANG/WIREIMAGE; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

– a position underlined when previous coalition partners refused to work with Benkirane. This weakness is reflected in Othmani’s hastily constituted government.

In keeping with its traditional scope of interests, the PJD has retained several social portfolios and a couple of economic ministries. But key economic posts and the justice ministry have gone to the Palace’s favoured party of the moment – the Rassemblement National des Indépendants led by Aziz Akhannouch – and to Palace appointees standing on a ‘loyalist’ party ticket, including former interior minister Mohamed Hassad, who moves to the urgently-in-needof-reform education ministry.

Othmani’s previous spell in government started well. His positive approach to diplomacy gave rise to hopes he might engineer a rapprochement with Algeria.

But Othmani was seen to have behaved naïvely. “Making Algiers his first port of call as minister was ambitious, and Othmani clearly wasn’t up to it,” a leading Moroccan commentator and critic of the PJD observed. “He managed to get himself photographed with a member of the Polisario Front, and that set-up spread like wildfire across social media.”

A more prudent premier may have emerged from the experience, able to draw on his long experience as a practising psychiatrist and ability to engage across social and gender divides. His enthusiasm to take up the post seems to have overcome any reservations about the nature of Benkirane’s ouster and the calls of PJD members who believe the party should have walked away from government.

AYO OKE Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari suspended the National Intelligence Agency director in April after the agency tried to get its hands on $43m in cash found in Ikoyi, Lagos, under mysterious circumstances.

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1

SYRIA

59

Number of Tomahawk missiles launched from US warships on 6 April targeting an airfield controlled by the Syrian government’s military. Fighter jets at the Shayrat airfield had earlier carried out a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 civilians.

4

FRANCE

Macron v. Le Pen

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CHENG DAYU/XINHUA-REA

No Easter bunnies in Pyongyang’s parade on 15 April

French voters will choose a president, in a race between centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, in a runoff election on 7 May. The first round of voting on 23 April saw the rejection of France’s two main political parties for the first time since the country’s modern political system was created nearly six decades ago. Macron won the poll with 23.8% of the votes, slightly in front of Le Pen, who scored 21.5%. Macron, who has a background in finance and has never held elected office, is heavily favoured to win the next round of voting.

NORTH KOREA

Brinkmanship and bargains

3

5

PHILIPPINES

“Why do

you have to fuck with us? ” VICHAN POTI//REA

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has warned of an unfolding security crisis after North Korea carried out missile tests on 16 April and the US responded by threatening to send warships to the region. “The United States and South Korea and North Korea are engaging in tit for tat, with swords drawn and bows bent,” Yi told state-run news agency Xinhua. North Korea’s Kim Jongun has been aggressively expanding his country’s arsenal. He is purportedly trying to develop a nuclear device that can be fitted into a long-range missile.

US president Donald Trump said he was “sending a flotilla” to the Sea of Japan, but it later emerged that the strike force was actually first sailing to the Indian Ocean for joint exercises with the Australian navy. Nevertheless, Pyongyang has detained three American citizens in response to the threats.

As a close ally of North Korea, China’s role in calming the crisis will be key.

Trump indicated that he would set aside plans to slap tariffs on Chinese imports in exchange for Beijing’s help to diffuse the situation.

The controversial President Rodrigo Duterte took issue with the European Parliament’s resolution condemning the high number of extrajudicial killings in his antidrug campaign.

TURKEY

More power for Erdogan Turkish voters handed new wide-ranging powers to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on 16 April, when a constitutional referendum was held.

Erdoğan’s party narrowly won the poll with just 51.4% of the vote.

From 2019, Turkey’s president will have the power to hire and fire ministers, appoint judges and rule by decree. The country will also abolish the position of prime minister. International electoral observers said the campaign leading up to the election strongly favoured the government side, mostly because it was held during a state of emergency.

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LONDON | UK The Africa Financial Services Investment Conference. afsic.net

ALGERIA PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS 4 May

Jacob Zuma’s government welcomes the WEF back to South Africa

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM ON AFRICA 3-5 May DURBAN | SOUTH AFRICA IGD LEADERS – FRONTIER 100 5-6 May

Regional and global leaders from the public and private sectors will converge on the coastal city of Durban this May to attend the three-day Forum, held in partnership with the government of South Africa, which also hosted it in 2011. The 27th edition of the regional Forum, on the theme ‘Responsive and Responsible Leadership’, is expected to attract over 2,700 delegates. The programme will be organised around five main areas including preparing for the fourth industrial revolution, strengthening systems for global collaboration, and addressing identity through positive narratives. In January, deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa led a 56-person delegation to the main World Economic Forum event in Davos, Switzerland. Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, and Transnet group CEO Siyabonga Gama, are among the co-chairs for the Africa event. weforum.org

DURBAN | SOUTH AFRICA Following on from the World Economic Forum on Africa, the Initiative for Global Development’s leaders’ forum builds on its key themes. igdleaders.org

NIGERIA INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIR 8-13 May LAGOS | NIGERIA Promoting literacy and the book trade in Nigeria. nibfng.org

MARRAKECH | MOROCCO Celebrating excellence in advertising, communication and media from across the continent. africancristal.com

NOLLYWOOD WEEK PARIS 11-14 May PARIS | FRANCE Naija comes to the City of Lights. nollywoodweek.com •

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EAST AFRICA COM 17-18 May

ABUJA | NIGERIA African infrastructure summit. afc-live.com

NAIROBI | KENYA Telecoms, media and technology in the region. tmt.knect365.com/eastafricacom

OXFORD AFRICA CONFERENCE 19-20 May

AFRICAN CRISTAL FESTIVAL 11-12 May

THE AFRICA REPORT

AFC LIVE 15-16 May

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GAS-TO-POWER WORLD CONGRESS 16-17 May CAPE TOWN | SOUTH AFRICA oilandgascouncil.com

OXFORD | UK Business, politics and the arts meet academia on the theme ‘Breaking the frame[works]’. oxfordafricaconference.com

FESTIVAL MAWAZINE 12-20 May

AIO CONFERENCE & GENERAL ASSEMBLY 21-24 May

RABAT | MOROCCO More than 1,000 Arab, African and international music artists will perform. festivalmawazine.ma

KAMPALA | UGANDA African Insurance Organisation annual conference. aioconferenceuganda.com

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AfDB ANNUAL MEETINGS 22-26 May AHMEDABAD | INDIA 2017’s focus is on agriculture. afdb.org/am

AFRICA INDEPENDENTS FORUM 24-25 May LONDON | UK Corporate independents and oil, gas and energy industry experts gather in London. africa-independentsforum.com

GRI AFRICA SUMMIT 30-31 May JOHANNESBURG | SOUTH AFRICA A meeting for all players in the real-estate development business. griclub.org

MATTHEW JORDAAN/WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM

AFSIC 3-5 May

18

Chester Missing Puppet political analyst

Enough is enough with our junk president

W

hile America has its 45th president and purportedly its second one of colour – because orange is a colour – we in South Africa are on our fourth democratically elected president. The West often only really seems to know about two African leaders: Nelson Mandela and The Lion King, and sometimes they seem to think Nelson Mandela is actually Morgan Freeman.

So, my American friends, let me fill you in. South Africa’s President Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma is a 75-year-old ex-cattle herdsman who didn’t finish school, went into the struggle against apartheid and spent 12 years in prison on Robben Island, and is one of the sharpest political minds we have. He’s nobody’s fool – unless you are a guy called Atul Gupta, then, yes, he’s your fool.

It all started with a fax, so you know this story goes way back. Our president was never a wealthy man. Apartheid did that to most black families, especially to families who gave up their lives to fight it. Zuma became the deputy president of South Africa in 1999, and probably listened to too much Prince because he has literally not stopped partying. His financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, went to jail for giving him a whole bunch of cash for allegedly helping use his position to facilitate a multibillion-dollar arms deal. Then we made him president, because in South Africa we like to keep track of criminals, by electing them.

Well it’s a bit more complicated than that. The African National Congress (ANC) is in an alliance including the nationalist and economically centrist ANC, the socialist South African Communist Party (SACP), and the all-powerful group of unions, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).

They call themselves the tripartite alliance. They are not aware that this makes them sound like they are in Star Wars.

Jacob Zuma became president when the leftists seized control of the alliance and fired Thabo Mbeki, a sitting president, for not being revolutionary enough. Ironically, Jacob Zuma is now

facing the same threat. His closest minions are telling us that you can’t fire a sitting president, and lecturing followers about loyalty. Really.

He’s like a home-wrecker despising cheaters.

As a side note: marijuana just became legal in South Africa. Not a coincidence.

A decade ago, the socialists were happy to ignore Zuma’s cloud of corruption, charges seemingly dropped for very questionable reasons, and a previous rape trial, to elect him first the president of the ANC and then of the country. So this piece needs to start with: our president hasn’t become a junk president. He already was one.

He has avoided appearing in court for years, all the time telling us he wants his day in court. It’s Catholic-priest level hypocrisy. In South Africa, the vegetarians are also eating steak.

He’s nobody’s fool – unless you are a guy called Atul Gupta, then, yes, he’s your fool In a massive turnaround, although perhaps not yet a pivotal one, in the first weeks of April 2017 both the SACP and Cosatu rejected Zuma and called for him to step down. It’s not that his hand is in the cookie jar. The cookie jar has been moved to his house and has a fire pool.

South Africa has been in turmoil in the past few weeks, with repeated marches by middle- and working-class groups from across the political spectrum who all widely agree: junk president.

White South Africans marching and protesting.

It’s putting-comedians-out-of-work-level funny.

Our puppet president has long been seen as Kermit the Frog to his puppeteer friends and prominent business-people the Guptas, a.k.a.

Jim Henson’s long-lost Indian family. Zuma took it a step too far on 30 March, when he controversially fired our widely respected finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, and replaced him with the liked, but less suitable and seemingly more pliable, Malusi Gigaba. Gigaba, who dresses like he’s the Minister of Hugo Boss Suits, is less likely to block THE AFRICA REPORT

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To be clear, the President does technically have the right to hire and fire cabinet ministers as he deems fit, however he did this without consulting within the ANC itself. You can only be one person’s puppet at a time, folks.

Deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe, and ANC treasurer general Zweli Mkhize have also questioned Zuma’s behaviour.

It seems that the ANC is also itself asking: is he a junk president?

a much-maligned trillion-dollar nuclear deal the President and his cronies have been gunning for.

The ratings agencies then started downgrading our credit rating to junk status, which has galvanised the middle- and working classes around protecting their wallets. An ex-Robben Islander struggle hero behaved so badly he managed to galvanise middle-class white and working-class black interests. In South Africa, that’s like Lex Luthor and Superman marching together.

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So what now? Our next national election is in 2019 and in December the ANC will choose its next leader, probably in a tent, and probably involving a big cake and a prayer to ‘Comrade God’. The question is whether Zuma will see out his full term, or will the ANC do a ‘Mbeki 2’ and fire another sitting president?

Zuma is not seen as junk by everyone, and not everyone agrees that he’s junk enough.

At some point, the tension between losing votes and riding on patronage need to reach a tipping point.

At some point the many, many good people in the ANC – many of whom helped to overthrow apartheid – will say: “Enough is enough.”

It might help in the warfare of tone and identity politics if incensed white South Africans realised that for many people “enough was enough” in 1652 and that a more nuanced, historically honest political stance makes their complaints seem less whiny.

But real change will come when people ask, after 23 years of political power, why has service delivery been mired by scandal after scandal while the arms of the law that should be exposing this are directly undermined by the President and his sub-puppets? It is the President’s job to uphold the constitution, but he was found to have acted unconstitutionally, like a democratically elected Henry the Eighth.

Change will come when the ANC itself realises that Jacob Zuma’s top political minion right now is the minister of water and sanitation, but he’s left us in the poo.

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Muanda and Banana Banana, a sandy isthmus jutting out towards Angola, has seen better days.

Congolese politicians promise a world-class deepwater port, but this spit of land currently houses hundreds of soldiers and their families, dumped here by the government. Pay a bored soldier to let you slip through the camp, and the mouth of the River Congo reveals its immense dimensions. Muanda, on the other hand, is an archetypal one-company oil town. Rigs punctuate the horizon. Hundreds of wells pock the earth. Schools, hospitals, roads and libraries are paid for by oil firm Perenco, which employs more than a thousand people when global conditions are favourable. In 2013, a Congolese Senate investigation found that oil production had a “disastrous impact”, polluting the air, soil and water.

Congo The majestic Bumba

Kisangani Mbandaka Kindu Boma Matadi Banana

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The Africa Report takes an exclusive trip up the river that holds keys to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s brutal colonial past, its present as a musical powerhouse, and its future, one in which the Inga Dam potentially supplies enough power to fuel an economic revolution not only for the DRC but also the region. We visit the site of a planned THE AFRICA REPORT

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Boma

A 1907 postcard from colonial-era Boma

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Boma, once a colonial capital, has its origins as a slaving station. The Belgian colonisation was one of violent hypocrisy: a brutal campaign of resource extraction under the supposed humanitarian banner. While Belgian cities like Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels erected monumental architecture on the back of Congolese rubber exports, an ancient civilisation, the Kongo, was decimated.

Matadi

river

The country’s largest commercial port is about 150km inland at Matadi, the capital of Kongo Central Province. Here, oceangoing vessels reach the end of their navigable journey several kilometres short of impassable rapids which came to be known as the ‘Cauldron of Hell’. Several million tonnes of imports are disgorged here annually, destined for Kinshasa and the Congolese interior by road or a recently rehabilitated railway.

But the process is anything but easy.

Last year a Filipino company and its Congolese partners inaugurated a second port called Mbengu Matadi on the other side of the river, which – the shareholders hope – will benefit from the existing dysfunction. Additional expansion is planned, and early impressions are positive, says a local businessman.

The port acts as a magnet for a local population in pursuit of work. More than 300,000 people live in Matadi. Haphazardly constructed houses and shops crowd the hillsides that slope precipitously towards the river, where the pretty town centre nestles with its slippery smooth cobbles, a fine cathedral and a beautiful but now shuttered 1930s hotel.

deepsea port at Banana, the inland port of Matadi, the twin capitals of Brazzaville and Kinshasa, cash-starved Mbandaka, the infamous ‘bend in the river’ Kisangani, and the sleepy city of Kindu at the doorstep of the country’s restive eastern provinces, to see the river’s influence on the continent-sized country at the heart of Africa THE AFRICA REPORT

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24 FRONTLINE | CONGO: THE MAJESTIC RIVER

Kinshasa

goods and passengers embarking and disembarking, officials checking and extorting, porters swaying under large sacks, much milling around, overladen trucks pulling in and out through the gates, and businesspeople and their agents completing paperwork, keeping an eye on their goods and meeting port officials in small offices.

Not every port along the river has been privatised and some form awkward neighbours: next to the upmarket colonial-era yacht club is a stretch of river frontage densely packed with decaying ship hulks, all filled with inhabitants. Children dart around, there is a strong smell of cooking and la rumba Congolaise seems always to be playing from at least one sound system.

According to Robert, a river transporter: “That is a place without

With at least 12 million inhabitants, Kinshasa, the country’s capital, is among the most populous cities in the world. Frustratingly for a city that began its modern life as a river station, most of Kinshasa today is divorced from the Congo River by high walls that shield from public view the private ports proliferating along the river’s edge.

On the other side of those walls is a different world. The ports hum with activity: boats arriving and departing,

law. Many of the people who live from the trade that goes up and down this river stay there. In that place, state officials can only enter as friends.”

Beer brewed in Kinshasa travels up river by barge, particularly since Bralima, owned by Heineken, started closing up-country breweries to reduce costs. The Kinshasa brewers all have their own ports, where crate after crate is loaded onto barges harnessed together from nose to tail that collectively can extend to over 180m.

Navigating the river’s shifting sandbanks with these pousseurs is difficult, but the beer boat crews are expert, still preferring calibrated sticks to electronic devices to gauge depth.

An even bigger hazard for the pousseurs are the many tracasseries of the various services that both ply the river and come hungry to the port,

Inga The Inga I and II dams at Inga Falls have a total installed capacity of around 1,800MW, but output has been far lower due to maintenance problems. There have long been plans to build Inga III to produce 4,500MW, and later the Grand Inga Dam to generate a whopping 39GW. But the plans have remained just that – plans. The government said in September 2016 that it would announce the winning candidate to build Inga III a month hence. Since then, silence.

All phases (including Phase 1)

$100bn

Estimated cost of Grand Inga hydropower project

Phase 1 (Inga 3)

$14bn

Brazzaville Brazzaville sits 5km across the river from Kinshasa. There have been many proposals to build a bridge between the capitals, but none have

SOURCE: THE DRC GOVERNMENT

By Gregory Mthembu-Salter in Kinshasa, Mbandaka, Akula, Kisangani and Kindu, and William Clowes in Matadi and Muanda

A

Congolese proverb says: “No matter how full the river, it still wants to grow.”

The Congo River is the defining natural feature of the two countries that share its name.

It drains one third of the entire continent’s water to the Atlantic and offers the tantalising possibility of thousands of megawatts of clean power. Its seemingly endless tributaries act as an economic, cultural and environmental lung, for Congo and the planet.

It is, perhaps, surprising then that the river receives so little acknowledgement or interest these days from either government. Referenced proudly in the old Zairean national anthem as “the majestic river”, the Congo River is entirely absent from the new one.

For years in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), three times a day, every day, national TV broadcast a speech of then-president Joseph Mobutu Sese Seko thatpaidfurther poetichomage to the river’smajesty,wherethedictatorcompared

himself to the sun in his alleged ability to give his people sustenance. Today, perhaps because of Mobutu’s repeated, hollow conflation of the river’s glories with his own, there is largely presidential silence on the subject.

And when President Joseph Kabila talks about the Congo River, it is usually in far more prosaic terms. In a rare speech to the National Assembly and the Senate in November 2016, for example, Kabila referred once, briefly, to the rehabilitation of river barges to enable the THE AFRICA REPORT

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including the river police, the navy, the Kinshasa tax authority, the environment ministry and the customs authorities. Many of the smaller-scale transporters cut deals with these services, arranging to pay them an agreed amount of illegal rent – but no more – to save time.

Time is of the essence in the river transport business. According to a river transporter who shifts beer up country: “I travel from Kinshasa to Kisangani, loading and unloading at Mbandaka, Lisala and Bumba on the way. Each trip should take about three months. I need to do four trips a year to make my margin, but because I detest all these deals everything takes me longer and I end up doing fewer trips than that. But then […] when you cut deals there is no end to it.

What are you supposed to do?”

DAV

ID CO RIO/ G ETT Y

Kinshasa: a vast metropolis of rich and poor, built on the river and its uses

materialised. Brazzaville has an estimated 1.8 million inhabitants – nearly half the Republic of Congo’s population. Unlike Kinshasa, the city offers good access to the water’s edge, and many Brazzavillois stroll

the river banks. The city has been a pressure valve for Kinshasa, and vice versa. When politics heat up in one city, many take refuge in the other until something shifts and it becomes safe – or opportune – to return.

Congo River to become again the country’s “natural highway”, before moving on swiftly to other topics.

The cynically named Congo Free State – in fact the personal fiefdom of Belgian king Léopold II – was founded on the premise of the river as a natural highway. The dreaded Force Publique, a press-ganged militia notorious for meting out deadly violence and destruction to those who opposed the new state – or who didn’t work hard enough for it – was shunted up and down the Congo River in steamers. And the rubber and ivory, the production of which the Force Publique compelled, THE AFRICA REPORT

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Kanda Bongo Man The musician who revolutionised soukous was born in Inongo on Lake Mai-Ndombe.

In Brazzaville’s city centre, public infrastructure is in good shape, and grandiose, as befits an oil-rich economy controlled by one family with a small population. In poorer quartiers, however, the situation is dire.

was sent down it to the new capital, modestly named Léopoldville.

As international concern mounted about the tactics of the Force Publique, in 1908 the Belgian government took over the colony from the king and renamed it the Belgian Congo. The colonial administration developed the ‘natural highway’ concept much further, rapidly expanding the river transport network.

GOODS AND PEOPLE

GWENN DUBOURTHOUMIEU FOR JA

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Soon, a growing fleet of steamers and barges plied the river and its many tributaries, working to strict timetables and transporting downstream rising volumes

of palm oil, coffee, cotton, cocoa, maize and other commodities from industrialscale plantations. They transported upstream a range of imported and locally manufactured goods. River stations grew into towns, and then into cities.

Alongwiththemovementofgoods,the river’s human flow grew exponentially.

People had sailed and paddled up and down the Congo since time immemorial, leading to the development and spread of Lingala, which was, long before its adoption as the language of the Force Publique, the lingua franca of the people of the river. The barges and steamers of the colonial era, however,

M PA SCAL AIT R E

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Joseph Mobutu Sese Seko

Mbandaka Mbandaka is the capital of Equateur Province and boasts some of the grandest surviving colonial-era architecture in the country. The decaying government buildings and private mansions speak of a time when business boomed. Vast agricultural plantations inland used to send mountains of coffee, cotton, palm oil, rubber and cocoa to Kinshasa via Mbandaka, where they were collected by barges that had brought with them all manner of goods from the big city.

In the mid-1970s, the plantations were for the most part commandeered and redistributed to friends and allies

enabled people to travel much further than before, and in far greater numbers, facilitating an intermingling of the communities of the region in a way and at a level that was completely new.

Among those to profit from the new opportunities were musicians. Singers and groups from all over the colony made their way by river to the capital, bringing with them myriad Congolese styles, with those from the Atlantic coast also increasingly influenced by the West African highlife sound. Added to the mix were European musical instrument retailers, music promoters and recording studios. Léopoldville became a musical

of then-president Mobutu. This generated enormous wealth for the beneficiaries but proved disastrous for the plantations. Nearly all of them now lie derelict, and there is little to transport upriver except small volumes of groundnuts, beans and rice grown by small-scale farmers.

Another blow was the May 2016 closure of Mbandaka’s Bralima brewery.

The brewery was not only one of the main employers in the city but was also the main paying customer for the electricity and water utilities.

Joseph Mabidi, the head of the Office National des Transports (Onatra)

melting pot, eventually developing the unique sound that dominated African popular music for more than 40 years.

The great Wendo Kolosoy, who is generally regarded as the ‘father’ of the Congolese sound, worked for years as a mechanic on river steamers before abandoning the trade to become a professional musician after meeting Greek entrepreneurNicolasJeronimidis, whoin 1947 agreed to record Wendo’s music on his new Léopoldville-based record label, Ngoma. When bands wanted to tour, the river was the obvious way to do so. The great Franco Luambo Makiadi, among many others, regularly used to ply the

PER-ANDERS PETTERSSON/COSMOS

The autocrat was born in Lisala, a small town on the right branch of the Congo River.

in Mbandaka, recalls the glory days: “In the 1970s, this place was very different.

Even in the 1980s, we had 14 boats based here. Now we have none. For the private sector, it is better. There are at least 50 boats of some sort coming here a month. Our problem at Onatra is that we have no money, so our clients

Congo on long tours, playing extended residencies at each major riverside town.

In 1971, Mobutu Sese Seko renamed the country, the river and the national currency, calling all of them Zaire.

Mobutu came from Lisala, a river town, and might for this reason, perhaps, have been expected to take an interest in maintaining the river’s colonial transportinfrastructure. He did not. Instead, one after another, boats and loading equipment belonging to the state-owned national transport service Office National des Transports (Onatra) broke down for lack of maintenance and parts. Harrowing accidents and the resulting mass drowning THE AFRICA REPORT

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CONGO: THE MAJESTIC RIVER | FRONTLINE 27

The power and the glory

A privately run boat made from tree trunks carries passengers and their goats near Mbandaka

have to pre-finance everything. […]

Many of the tributaries feed the River Congo near Mbandaka, like River Lomami and River Momboyo. And there are farmers in all those places.

If we had boats, we could collect their produce and supply them. We could do what we are supposed to do.”

of river passengers became more common. And the ‘tracasseries’ (harassment) meted out by the growing array of government officials on the river and in its ports began steadily to worsen.

RECLAIMING THE RIVER

The river is host to a vast array of agglomerations, from tiny villages to the megapolis of Kinshasa. The lack of infrastructure in the latter leaves many Kinois living in Dante-esque squalor, while other parts of the city are being designed to accommodate the rising Congolese elite. Developers have backed the Cité du Fleuve project, which is reclaiming THE AFRICA REPORT

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The Congo is a river of superlatives. Its course crosses the Equator twice and it is the deepest river in the world, plumbing to 220m in places.

At 4,371km, it is second in length in Africa to the Nile, and features more than 20 waterfalls and thousands of islands, some more than 15km wide.

The Congo River is home to at least 686 species of fish, 80% of which are found nowhere else.

A third of Africa’s water flows into the massive Congo River basin, which cover 4,000,000km2 or 13% of the continent’s landmass. The river flows north-west as far as Kisangani and then to the south-west beyond. West of Kinshasa and Brazzaville, which sit on opposite sides of Pool Malebo, the river narrows and drops through cataracts, the force of which drives the Inga dams.

Further west, past Matadi and Boma, the river’s discharge at its mouth averages a mighty 40,000m³ of water a second, peaking at 75,000m³, a volume exceeded only by the Amazon.

an initial 20ha of land from the Congo River for gleaming apartments and villas.

The hustle of Kinshasa contrasts with the sleepiness of a city like Kindu (see page 29), an urban centre of about 200,000 people that is home to a United Nations logistics base for the peacekeeping mission in eastern DRC. The helicopter pilots are all Ukrainian and Russian, somehow cooperating there despite the worsening politics back home.

The pilots like to welcome passengers to ‘Kindu paradise’. It is meant as a joke on how little happens in the city. But a lack of drama has its charms, as residents of wartorn Goma or Bukavu will testify.

One of the river’s greatest potential uses is as a producer of electricity.

During the mid-1950s, the Belgian colonial authorities initiated preparations to install a hydroelectric dam at the Congo River’s Inga Falls, 140km south-west of the capital, and completed several technical studies, but independence came before they could take further action.

Construction of the first of three planned phases of dams at Inga finally began in 1968 and was completed in 1971 at a cost of $140m, with installed capacity of 351MW. Phase II was completed in 1977, though the 1,800km of high-voltage transmission lines

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28 FRONTLINE | CONGO: THE MAJESTIC RIVER

Koffi Olomide The many-nicknamed music star was born in 1956 in Stanleyville, now Kisangani.

Kisangani Kisangani, the infamous ‘bend in the river’, is the final destination of a journey of more than 1,200km for pousseurs (barges) from Kinshasa. There has been little new construction in Kisangani in decades, and many of its oldest buildings still stand. This, and the mostly unpaved streets, lend Kisangani the air of a place where time has stood still.

Kisangani, then called Stanleyville, became in 1961 the last redoubt of the supporters of assassinated prime minister Patrice Lumumba. From there, Antoine Gizenga proclaimed the Free Republic of Congo, which was recognised by the Soviet Union and China. The republic failed, Gizenga was arrested and the city fell into the hands of the Simba, a mystic anti-Mobutu militia, until 1964, when a mix of mercenaries and Belgian paratroopers violently recaptured Kisangani.

The city’s hinterland has been increasingly found to be rich in diamonds and gold, and mining has displaced the river

that carry its output to Katanga took a further five years to install. Inga II went way over budget and proved cripplingly expensive, unfortunately coinciding with a collapse in the price of copper and cobalt that both slashed Katanga’s demand for electricity and the capacity of the country to service the debt.

There have been several attempts during President Joseph Kabila’s presidency to kick-start the long-mooted Inga III but none succeeded. In their place, the government invited new bidders to tender for Inga III in 2012.

Five years later, two consortiums are still waiting for a decision.

as Kisangani’s main source of wealth. This mineral wealth became a curse in the early 2000s, when Rwandan and Ugandan troops and their Congolese allies fought three vicious battles in and around the city until the Rwandans eventually gained the upper hand. Rwandan and Ugandan troops have since departed, but their influence has not. One Kisanganibased gold trader said he reckoned 200kg of newly mined gold pass through the city every month, and that nearly all of it flows out, smuggled, to Kigali and Kampala.

The river remains vital to the city, nonetheless. There is river fishing, most famously at the beautiful Boyoma Falls just outside of town. Most of Kisangani’s consumer goods and fuel still come by river from Kinshasa. And a trade has also developed in tin and coltan ores from Maniema Province, some of which travels to Kisangani by river from Kindu, and from there by land to Goma in the east. The route seems crazy, but the alternative, shorter, ‘direct’ route from Maniema to Goma is in such a dire state and so subject to harassment that many traders prefer to take the long way round.

Kisangani has been an administrative centre from its inception, and the civil service is a major employer. Until 2015, Kisangani was the capital of Orientale Province, which covered 500,000km². Orientale was then split into five, leaving Kisangani as the capital of Tshopo Province.

The bitter civil war that engulfed the DRC from 1998 to 2002, and sucked in most of the country’s neighbours, had a disastrous impact on Congo River transport. The frontline between the territory controlled by then-presdient Laurent Kabila and his allies and the area controlled by his Uganda-backed rival Jean-Pierre Bemba lay a little way east of Mbandaka. The war meant that no cargo boats could travel between Kinshasa and Kisangani. And since most of the hinterland surrounding Mbandaka was also in Bemba’s hands, very little of the region’s agricultural produce could travel downstream to the capital either. River

transport collapsed, and while it has picked up considerably in the 15 years since the civil war ended, people and goods sailing up and down the Congo River remain at a small percentage of their colonial-era levels, despite Joseph Kabila’s brave words to the National Assembly and Senate.

TAX FLOWS

Today, Onatra is a faint shadow of its former self. According to Joseph Mabidi, the state transport company’s general managerinMbandaka(seebox,page26): “In the 1980s, we had 14 boats here. Now we have none.” The number of private THE AFRICA REPORT

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Sleepy Kindu on the Lualaba tributary

barges and steamers on the Congo, at least, has picked up, though many are not seaworthy and accidents are common.

There is still plenty of demand for passenger transport. Few large-scale river traders have re-entered the market, but there is a multitude of small and medium-scale traders prepared to face and, if possible, evade official ‘taxation’ as they transport fish, bush meat and agricultural goods downstream for sale in Kinshasa, and manufactured goods and imports upstream to the Interior.

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The shabby retro landmark of Kisangani’s Résidence Zambeke

GWENN DUBOURTHOUMIEU

IPA

The Boyoma Falls at Kisangani prevent river transport from the west extending past the city.

Instead, boats ply the River Congo’s Lualaba tributary 400km down to Kindu, the capital of Maniema Province. Kindu residents are wont to say that they are ‘enclavé’, cut off from the world. A train service has

during the past four years resumed between the city and Lubumbashi, but the train travels only once or twice a month and in most places proceeds at walking pace. The city has a sleepy air, as befits somewhere that has avoided almost all the disruption and violence that has since the 1990s blighted the cities of eastern DRC, and lives mainly from gold, tin and coltan mining.

General Amisi Kumba The Kindu native suppressed antiKabila protests in Kinshasa in September 2016.

including customs and excise officials, the Office Congolais de Contrôle and the tourism and environment ministries.

According to Mongbongo Mbembo Leon, head of the ministry of environment’s Akula office: “None of us have transport, and only two of us get salaries. The rest of us are not paid by the state […] so we live by other means.”

What this means in practice is explained by Mama Enginda, who runs a private port in Mbandaka. “We used to have so much business here, but now traders avoid us because of the government services’ tracasseries [extortion].

The pressure is hardest on us because

ours is the largest private port. Many traders have relocated to another port controlled by the governor.” Where, no doubt, the harassment is probably lower.

The river, meanwhile, remains supremely indifferent to this human ebb and flow, endlessly sending water on to the Atlantic, rising and falling, as it always has, according to the rain patterns of the vast Congo River basin. The water moves with such force that the Congo River discharges 45km into the Atlantic Ocean, sadly along with ever-rising volumes of Central Africa’s plastic rubbish.

No matter how full it becomes, the Congo River still wants to grow.

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Kindu

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NIGERIA

Proxy warfare Allies of Iran and Saudi Arabia are fighting it out in Nigeria, with the government repressing the Shia organisation, Islamic Movement in Nigeria, in a move reminiscent of the conflict that radicalised the Boko Haram Islamist militancy

By Eromo Egbejule in Kaduna and Patrick Smith in Accra

order by a federal judge in Abuja at the endof2016toreleasethemwithin45days.

Theywerearrestedandbadlywounded inrunningbattlesinwhichmorethan340 of their followers were killed by Nigerian soldiers in Zaria in December 2015.

Kaduna State governor Nasir El-Rufai, whose office is emblazoned with the slogan ‘Make Kaduna great again!’, tells The Africa Report that once Zakzaky is released by state security, he will face trial “for all the crimes committed by the IMN over the years […] including murders, abductions and so forth.”

For El-Rufai, the problem is one of political opposition, not religious doctrine.

“We have no problem with Shiism […] it’s a free country.” But Zakzaky has been

recruiting to his Shia organisation in such a way as to pose an unacceptable challenge to the Nigerian state, according to El-Rufai. “They do not recognise or obey Nigerian law and their medium-term agenda is to start an Iranian-type Islamic revolution to create a theocratic state.”

The split between Sunni and Shiite Muslims originates in a dispute over the succession of the prophet Muhammad.

Out of Nigeria’s more than 90 million Muslims – it has the fifth-largest Muslim population in the world, more than either Turkey or Egypt – less than 5% are reckoned to be Shia. But Shiism is winning converts, boosted by Iranian proselytisers and Tehran’s funding of social projects, including more than 300 schools.

Nigerian Shiite Muslims in Kaduna State demand the release of Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, head of the outlawed IMN

SUNDAY ALAMBA/AP/SIPA

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rive north from Kaduna city – along one of Africa’s most dangerous highways – to the university town of Zaria and you will find another sort of carnage: burned-out buildings and piles of rubble that used to be schools. Along with these remnants of clashes between Nigerian soldiers and the followers of the Shiite leader Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, deep communal tensions persist in Zaria almost 18 months after an explosion of anger there shook the country.

Zakzaky’sShiaorganisation,theIslamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) had itsheadquarters in Zaria. Today, Zakzaky and his wife, Malama Zeenatudeen, are still detained by state security, despite an

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Across northern Nigeria, there is competition between the clinics and care centres that display Iran’s green, red and white flag and those that fly Saudi Arabia’s green flag with its Islamic inscription and symbol of a sword.

Of the three Shia organisations, only Zakzaky’s IMN has been outlawed due to its militant character, says El-Rufai.

“They have a paramilitary and they’re suspected of having a cache of weapons.

In the last 10 years or so [there were] at least two cases of Iranians importing weapons into Nigeria through Lagos […]. There was a Lebanese businessman caught with lots of weapons in Kano and linked to that.”

Zakzaky’s allies adamantly reject claims of links with armed groups.

“That someone is a governor doesn’t mean what he is saying is factual”,

argues Musa Shuaibu, head of the IMN’s academic forum. “I challenge anyone to name one instance when IMN has been found by any competent court in this country to have committed any act of terrorism. We have never carried arms against any citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, or destroyed any government property, even in the face of extreme provocation.”

JUSTICE ON ITS HEAD

Nigerian and international human rights organisations dispute the state government’s and the army’s version of events.

“The involvement of soldiers in the Zaria incidents and subsequent police actions against the Islamic movement raises major questions about Nigeria’s commitment to military reform,” Mausi Segun, senior Nigeria researcher at Human

Rights Watch, told reporters. “The Kaduna State government’s continued repression of the group [IMN] without holding the attackers responsible turns justice on its head.”

Kaduna State’s judicial commission concluded the military had used “excessive force” against the IMN militants in the December clashes and called for the prosecution of those responsible for wrongful killings. But it also held the IMN responsible for “acts of habitual lawlessness” and criticised Zakzaky for failing to rein in his followers.

Last October, El-Rufai outlawed the IMN, calling on security forces to arrest its members. Days later, fresh clashes erupted as the IMN was winding up the annual Ashura festival, during which adherents hold processions to mark the martyrdom of the prophet’s grandson.

Nasir El-Rufai

Governor, Kaduna State, Nigeria

Their agenda is to start an Islamic revolution TAR: What is the background to this clash between Shia Muslims and Nigerian security?

Nasir El-Rufai: In Kaduna State, there are three Shia organisations. The Islamic Movement in Nigeria [IMN] is completely different from the other two. And even though they’re all Shia, they’re not friends. The IMN does not recognise the Nigerian constitution, does not recognise Muhammadu Buhari as president or Nasir El-Rufai as governor of Kaduna State. They do not recognise Nigerian law, and their mediumterm agenda is to start an Islamic revolution, the Iraniantype revolution to create a theocratic state in Nigeria.

That’s their aim. They said that in their Funtua Declaration.

They infringe on the rights of others [with] processions blocking public highways, occupying schools.

Two recommendations of the inquiry are important.

The first is that the army used excessive force and should be held responsible for the unlawful killing of 347 people, and recommended they [those responsible] should be prosecuted. The second recommendation was that we should proscribe the IMN and prosecute El-Zakzaky and the leadership for all the crimes committed by the IMN over the years.

How have Zakzaky’s backers – including Iran – responded?

The Iranian ambassador started looking for me. He said to me: “Why are Shiites being killed in Kaduna?” I said: “Mr. Ambassador, that is chapter two of the story.” I said: “What did Shiites do to be shot at?” And he was quiet. I said: “What did they do? What did they tell you? Did the army just

I said to the Iranian ambassador “What did What triggered the clash between Zakzaky’s supporters and the army?

Shiites do to be shot at?” And he was quiet They blocked the road and said the head of the Nigerian army cannot drive through. come out of their barracks and start shooting? Do you have This is a Kaduna State government road. This is what Shiite written on your forehead so they know who to shoot?” happened in December 2015. Of course, the army has only one weapon, it’s the gun. They shot their way through, How are you going to manage Zakzaky and the IMN? killed seven people. After that, military intelligence picked Our strategy is to decimate them, to restrict their activities up communications between Zakzaky and his followers to practising Shia Islam without any political agenda, without around the country asking them to converge in Zaria. any Gülenist-like agenda. In Kaduna, we’re going to seize So the army decided that they had to cordon and search most of their assets. We’re going to weaken them. By the time the area because they believed he had weapons. That’s we put Zakzaky away to a prison in Calabar or Benin, we’ll what led to the clash and the death of 340 or more people. not worry about him. If they want to be Shia without blocking our highways, we’re fine with that.

Interviewed by Billie Adwoa McTernan You launched a judicial inquiry into the clashes. and Patrick Smith in Accra What did it conclude?

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Security experts warn that tensions between Zakzaky’s group and the security forces could boil over once again. Some draw parallels with how the police and military repression of Boko Haram – particularly the killing of its leader Mohammed Yusuf in 2009 – prompted the group to launch an insurgency.

“More moderate elements within the IMN have been killed or gone missing, leaving the stage for the less doctrinally sound to take up leadership, similar to how Yusuf’s death [as leader of Boko Haram] made Abubakar Shekau’s emergence possible,” says Cheta Nwanze, head of research at the Lagos-based SBM security consultancy.

Nwanze argues that Shiite Muslims, despite being a small minority, hold some very influential positions in the state apparatus. Some politicians, such as El-Rufai, draw parallels between the IMN and Fethullah Gülen’s movement in Turkey, which the government accuses of gradually infiltrating the key organs of the state.

GEOPOLITICAL RIVALRIES

“Unlike Boko Haram, which was made up of largely illiterate members and with limited spread in 2009, the IMN members are widespread, well-educated and are entrenched in all levels of society,” says Nwanze. “When this is coupled with the links to a state like Iran, which has never shied away from sponsoring militant groups, a violent IMN will be more devastating than Boko Haram.”

Such a crisis could also put the spotlight on how geopolitical rivalries – between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran – could play out in Nigeria.

From the Shiite viewpoint, successive Nigerian governments have moved far too close to Saudi Arabia and its backer, the United States (US).

And the new US government under Donald Trump has already marked out territory by selling Nigeria $600m worth of warplanes in April, a deal that was suspended under Barack Obama’s presidency because of human rights concerns. Another signal is Trump’s appointment of Rudolph Atallah, a former US Air Force pilot, as his Africa security director. Lebanese-born Atallah, who speaks fluent Arabic and French, has an on-the-ground knowledge of Iranian networks in Lebanon, Syria and beyond. He is likely to add Nigeria to his itinerary in the near future.

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Elna athan John

Author of o Born on a Tuesday, Nigeria

A government of the people, for the people

I

am in Vienna, speaking about the religious and political setting of my novel, when one of the only two black people in the audience asks a question. “You are biased,” he begins, just after introducing himself as a Nigerian lawyer. “You side with the Shiites. They got what was coming to them. They were acting like a state within a state.”

I suppress the feisty voice in my head urging me to cut him off.

He finishes and by the time I am done explaining that I do not have to be a Shiite to find the extrajudicial murder of hundreds of unarmed men, women and children unconscionable, more than 10 minutes have passed. This man who thinks it is OK to “teach Shiites a lesson” because they obstruct traffic has hijacked my reading. I change the subject, trying to hide, perhaps unsuccessfully, how much this upsets me.

A few weeks later in Berlin, I meet a few Nigerian academics for dinner. We talk mostly about Nigeria. The recent killing of hundreds of unarmed Shiites in Zaria comes between our mouths and our beers and spicy grilled fish prepared by our Cameroonian cook. As I lament the ease with which civilians can be killed in Nigeria, one person interjects: “But they were asking for it,” he says matter-of-factly.

Waves of disappointment sluice over me when I hear this, in a gathering of highly educated, well-travelled Nigerians. I wonder if I have expected too much from the Nigerians in the streets who celebrated the massacre and even looted the bodies, when even some members of Nigeria’s cultural elite feel the same way.

Perhaps at least in the proscription of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria and the repeated mass killing of its members, the Nigerian government – represented by its army – is having a rare incarnation as a government of the people, for the people.

In our representations of Shiites – like our representations of other gender, sexual and cultural minorities – we strip them of humanity. This makes it easier to discriminate against them and not have our joie de vivre interrupted when we see their lifeless bodies.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his Letters and Papers from Prison, puts it perfectly: “We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”

Why are human dignity, the right to believe differently, and a fair hearing debatable? To feel nothing for the suffering of another human, we must first make them outcasts. And with Shiites, their list of purported sins is long: they do not practise the right type of Islam, they insult the Sahaba – companions – of the prophet, they obstruct traffic with their processions, they are not like us. So maybe if the army buries 347 of them in one night, it is not that bad.

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DEBATE

Can Nigeria defeat Boko Haram?

The Nigerian Islamist group controls less territory and is weaker than it was two years ago, but doubts remain as to whether the government’s security and deradicalisation programmes can eliminate the deep-rooted Boko Haram threat

Yes

“I caught a Boko Haram commander with my bare hands.

We received intelligence that he was at Monday market,” says Alhaji Baba, head of intelligence for the Civilian Joint Task Force, the main vigilante group in Maiduguri.

“He didn’t resist, and we were able to hand him over to the military.”

In October 2015, various security agencies came together to create a poster of the 100 most wanted

At a security meeting in Dakar last December, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari declared Boko Haram “done for”. The retired general made winning the war against Boko Haram his main campaign promise. Within weeks of Buhari coming to power, several high-ranking army officers were Nigeria has one of the sacked for most robust deradicalisation involvement in programmes in Africa gun-running and profiteering from the Boko Haram insurgency.

Boko Haram members. It proved This was a clear message to the top so successful in yielding information brass that the business of war is that led to arrests that a few not meant for personal enrichment. months later a new poster was In the months after Buhari was issued depicting 99 more suspects. elected, there were no more stories Those die-hard Boko Haram of soldiers mutinying over a lack suspects who have so far evaded of weapons on the battlefield. arrest in Borno State have been Instead, key commercial towns subjected to very hard times occupied by Boko Haram were in recent months. The military, taken back, including Chibok, together with customs, closed Mubi and Ngala. Boko Haram went cattle markets in an attempt from controlling an area the size to prevent Boko Haram profiting of Belgium to being chased back from the sale of cows left behind to forest hideouts and caves by fleeing villagers. in the Mandara Mountains.

The 21 Chibok schoolgirls The Nigerian Air Force has been who were released by Boko Haram bombarding key Boko Haram in November 2016 recounted strongholds on the shores of Lake tales of eating grass because Chad and in the Sambisa Forest, supplies of meat had been cut liberating hundreds of abductees off and farms abandoned. along the way.

Boko Haram’s luck seemed Traditional hunters and to finally run out when an air strike vigilantes have been brought on a camp set barrels of fuel ablaze, in to help win the war. Their expert and a “tent full of dollars controlled knowledge of the vast terrain and

by Libyans” was consumed by the local population have helped the inferno, according to a lawyer the security agents arrest some who is in regular contact with Boko Haram kingpins. the group’s leadership.

Negotiations for the release of around 80 Chibok schoolgirls are ongoing. And the authorities, under the auspices of the national security adviser, have devised one of the most robust deradicalisation programmes in Africa for the schoolgirls and hundreds of other captives radicalised by the group.

For those insurgents who have lost the will to fight, “the national security corridor is there for them to surrender. Many have so far," Colonel S.A. Emmanuelle told participants at a recent seminar on deradicalisation of Boko Haram members.

The camp holding repentant former combatants is located in Gombe State and is by far the most heavily guarded facility in the area, leaving former fighters held there with very few options but to deradicalise.

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SYLVAIN CHERKAOUI/COSMOS

Tens of thousands of women and children in Borno State have been displaced by the war with Boko Haram

No

In mid-January the world was agog at news that the Nigerian Air Force had accidentally bombed a camp for internally displaced people, killing more than a hundred. The fact that Boko Haram attempted to attack and loot the same camp in the days that followed did not make the news, but was rather mentioned quietly by security officials.

That same week in January, suspected Boko Haram militants attacked a military barracks in Damaturu, Yobe State. Confirmation came from a Department of State Security official sent there to investigate. Again, the attack went unreported.

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their families in a deradicalisation centre. Of those who remain, about half want freedom while the other half prefer to stay with their captors.

The Chibok schoolgirl saga is a reflection of the divisions and destruction caused by war in north-east Nigeria. The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that the war has made 20,000 children orphans. Hundreds of those were kidnapped and indoctrinated by the group.

And dozens of teenage girls nurse children born to Boko Haram fighters, causing rejection by their families. The sect has penetrated every level of society, from the butchers in Maiduguri who clung to the words of the group’s original leader, Mohammed Yusuf, to the wealthy donors in the diaspora identified by the Inter-Governmental Action Group Against Money Laundering in West Africa.

“My own brother is part of them.

They offered him money, and he accepted their violent doctrine,” a women’s rights activist from Gwoza, Borno State who gave only her name as Amina told The Africa Report. “Look, my house was totally destroyed by Boko Haram,” she added, showing mobile phone footage of a burnt-out, affluentlooking property with soldiers rummaging through the remains.

Only a minority of Boko Haram footsoldiers who have left the battlefield surrendered voluntarily.

“When you destroy a bees’ nest, where do the bees go?” Ferdinand Ikwang, national deradicalisation organiser and the founder of Mission Alert International, asked at a recent

north-east Nigeria despite the counter-insurgency. The group’s leadership remains largely intact, according to two intelligence officials who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject. Abubakar Shekau’s faction of the group has started using child suicide bombers, unleashing more than 30 of them on civilians The sect has penetrated every in the past year. level of society, from butchers Shekau, who has to wealthy donors been declared dead by the military on six occasions, is alive and hiding seminar in Abuja. “There are sleeper on an island in Lake Chad behind cells in most major cities of this a human wall made up of at least 50 country,” he adds.

Chibok schoolgirls, says a source At the December security meeting close to the negotiations to free in Dakar, Buhari said that Boko them. Of the 276 schoolgirls Shekau Haram had been surrendering gave the order to abduct, around “en masse” in Chad. Niger and 60 escaped, 50 have been killed in air Nigeria have set up deradicalisation strikes or died from illness, 22 were programmes, but Chad has not.

Rosie Collyer in Abuja ‘freed’ and now live separately from

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W William Gumede Associa ate professor, School of Governance at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa*

Post-truth politics: Down the rabbit hole with Jacob Zuma

A

mong the current crop of demagogues, there is plenty of competition for the prize of canniest operator. The winner should not just be able to entrance a crowd with words and gestures, but should also be able to project an emotional bond with the audience, one that transcends any rational calculation. It is essential for the demagogue to be able to connect with the poor and the oppressed, and always good to cite personal struggles against injustice and tyranny as the starting point for parable-like speeches.

At its heart, the message must be simple. The demagogue targets the enemies of the people with brutal effect, playing on and exacerbating popular prejudices. But equally, the demagogue holds out the promise of positive change: to look up to the shining city on the hill, the promise of liberation, of national salvation. It is better if the demagogue can dance and sing, still better if he has a call to arms such as Umshini Wami (Bring me my machine gun) – and the crowd quickly gets drawn into this cathartic moment.

On all those scores, South Africa’s President Jacob Zumastandsheadandshoulderswith–andsometimes above – his demagogue peers running their own expanding fiefdoms: Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte and, of course, US President Donald Trump.

Just as the style and swagger of the demagogue is essential, so is the pretence of substance. An overarching slogan – Make America Great Again! or Radical Economic Transformation! – is pushed forward relentlessly. Then a simplistic narrative is woven around the slogan to give it some layers of credibility.

Although such outbursts were in clear contradiction of the policies of the governing African National Congress (ANC), Zuma did nothing to disavow Zwelithini’s dangerously provocative remarks. It would not be too hard to imagine Zuma and Zwelithini calling – in Donald Trump style – for a wall to be built alongside the Limpopo River to keep out those northerly neighbours.

A lie is carefully layered on top of another lie, or sometimes a half-truth, to build a case that sounds convincing to an audience of the dispossessed and downtrodden seeking a way out. In the midst of a spate of xenophobic attacks two years ago, a Zuma ally in KwaZulu-Natal, King Goodwill Zwelithini, called on migrants from Zimbabwe and Mozambique to “please go back to their countries” as “foreigners should not be allowed to inconvenience locals.”

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How can Zuma wave through such remarks and square that with his role as leader of the ANC, a pan-Africanist organisation? Well, he is a master of ‘post-truth’ politics. He appealed to the emotions of the grassroots and fashioned alternative realities and part-truths, firstly to win power and then to exert a wrestler’s grip on the state to retain power as long as necessary.

Zuma’s strategy is not the outright lie or outright falsehood. It is an exaggeration or distortion; it is the half-truth and nothing but the half-truth. His demagogic talent – which is considerable when he speaks in proverbial isiZulu – runs deep. Zuma offers his audience a wafer of truth, makes a link to a common prejudice and then exaggerates to the power of ten.

Half-truths are much harder to refute than outright lies, especially when they tap into popular perceptions. For example, it is beyond dispute that South Africa is one of the most unequal societies on earth, but that is a symptom – rather than an explanation – of government failure. Zuma’s foes argue that sharply rising joblessness and dysfunctional schools are overwhelmingly the responsibility of his government.

They set out their case in meticulous detail.

With a Zuma rhetorical flourish, a half-truth here and there, newspapers such as The New Age and the loyalist state broadcaster dismiss the critics – often with the implication they are unpatriotic saboteurs.

Apartheid history, with its racial divisions, made fertile ground for politicians who want to use posttruth tactics to win power. Post-truth politics is also a lucrative business technique: allowing companies to win contracts by trickery, by lying about eligibility or misleading their rivals.

In highly polarised countries such as South Africa, leaders of differing ethnic, racial or religious groups

Zuma offers his audience a wafer of truth, then exaggerates to the power of ten can reinforce their position by creating alternative realities for their communities. Under apartheid, the Nationalist Party did that for Afrikaners, who developed a historical narrative – false in most respects, but it was immensely comforting to the Broederbond and similar ethnic associations.

Some 23 years after the country’s first free elections, South Africa’s public sphere is still racially compartmentalised. Although the ownership and management of the media have been deracialised, many of television and radio programmes still target racially defined audiences.

Many churches are predominantly either black or white. Churches in the countryside are mostly black. The vast rural countryside is tightly controlled by black traditional authorities. Zuma tailors his messages for these black audiences, with the support of local clergymen, to great effect. The Zion Christian Church is hugely important for black politicians; Zuma has wooed it assiduously.

Successive apartheid regimes used post-truth tactics long before they were designated as such.

Core to their rationale was a racist belief system designed to justify continuing black oppression.

Showing the flaws in those arguments was at the core of the liberation movement strategy. It forced the apparatchiks of apartheid to the negotiating table by the late 1980s.

Running the ANC’s intelligence apparatus in exile, and training in security work with East Germany’s Stasi, gave Zuma an excellent grounding in the use of propaganda. First, he put that to work against his foes within the liberation movement, critics of his harsh leadership of Mbokodo, the ANC’s security department. Relatives of Thami Zulu, a young recruit who died after being taken in custody by the Mbokodo, said they were fobbed off with falsifications from Zuma about the young man’s fate.

Once the ANC was in power, Zuma adeptly pushed his career forward by cultivating a persona as a leftist and progressive close to the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the trade unions.

Those organisations saw Zuma – with his background as a shepherd boy in rural KwaZulu-Natal

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combined with obvious political skills – as a perfect ally to campaign against Thabo Mbeki’s presidency of the ANC in 2007. That may have been Zuma’s finest hour: a victory for the smiling man from Nkandla against Mbeki and the elite sophisticates of the ANC. Such was Zuma’s political agility that he used the veterans of the union movement and the SACP – long regarded as the political tsars of the liberation movement – and then dumped them.

When Mbeki sacked Zuma as deputy president on the grounds that he should answer the 783 charges of corruption against him, Zuma played the victim. He told his supporters that he had been unfairly tripped up by Mbeki, who was in league with state institutions.

Zuma cast himself as a leader of humble origins alongside most black South Africans. According to Zuma, they were all being sidelined in a conspiracy

by Mbeki, the black elite and the white establishment.

Zuma said he was targeted with anti-corruption charges simply because he wanted to advance the interests of the black poor.

Because apartheid regimes often manipulated the judicial system and prosecuting authorities to target blacks, it sounded plausible to many that the same tactics could be used against Zuma by figures such as Mbeki. And Mbeki’s own style of government did little to counter such interpretations. In fact, Zuma had ensconced himself in the Mbeki elite and benefited greatly, not least from solicitations to work with various little-known but wealthy companies.

It was mainly those corporate relationships that led to the 783 corruption charges.

Again, Zuma has pressed post-truth arguments into service to deflect criticism of his spending R280m ($21.3m) on refurbishments to his homestead in Nkandla. Such targeting was unfair, said Zuma, because all presidents had state money to finance security upgrades to their private houses.

That is half true, as some presidents had spent R1m-2m.

It was Zuma’s deflection of criticism of his relationship to the Gupta family – the accusation that this family of businessmen had captured the South African state via Zuma – that was particularly ingenious. Bell Pottinger, the British public relations firm hired by the Guptas, stoked up the recent campaign against ‘white monopoly capital’.

After half a century of apartheid, the phrase has huge resonance and suggests that worrying about the Guptas is a distraction from the main event. Ditto, the newmantraof‘radicaleconomic transformation’: it has become a symbol of the liberation struggle against white monopoly capital.

Bell Pottinger, buoyed up by success or wishing to hide its embarrassment, has since resigned from the contract with the Guptas.

The need to embrace radical economic transformation was put out as the explanation for Zuma sacking finance minister Pravin Gordhan and his deputy Mcebisi Jonas. Recalled during a treasury roadshow in London, Gordhan and Jonas were cast as stooges of white monopoly capital by Zuma in a widely ridiculed intelligence report. No matter, he found enough of his own stooges in the ANC’s Youth League and Women’s League to rehearse such fictions in public.

It seems that the calls for radical economic transformation are providing Zuma’s chosen successor – his ex-wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma – with a manifesto

During apartheid, the government said protesters were influenced by Russia statement. Dlamini-Zuma is no slouch at post-truth politics, telling a cadres forum that the reason why young people think the ANC under Zuma is corrupt is because they are taught to think that way at school.

Perhaps the last word in post-truth politics in South Africa should go to sacked deputy finance minister Jonas, who has publicly attacked the tactics used

by Zuma’s apparatchiks. “During apartheid, when many of us took to the streets against the system, the government said that we were influenced by Russia. They treated us as if we couldn’t think. […]

Today, we hear the same rhetoric. To say that these marches [against the Zuma government] are inspired by imperialists is to deny that it is the people of South Africa, it is the nation that is in distress, that is angry.” *William Gumede is chairman of the Democracy Works Foundation. His most recent book is Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times.

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Laurenço has appeared at several campaign rallies talking about beating corruption

ANGOLA

Changing of the guard

Veteran president José dos Santos has anointed his successor, but defence minister Lourenço will face a keen test of his political skill in the months to come

D

efence minister João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço will lead Angola’s ruling party to general elections against the backdrop of a sickly oil-based economy and regular revelations about corruption amongst the country’s top elite. Long-serving President José Eduardo dos Santos said he will make good on his promise to step down, but will do so a year earlier than planned, and chose Lourenço – a party loyalist he trusts – to manage the transition so as not to hurt his family’s grip on power.

As a former Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) secretary

general and veteran of the liberation struggle, Lourenço is seen as a unifying figure and a man hard to intimidate. He is making the fight against corruption, which he describes as “an evil that corrodes”society,hisrallyingcry,andsayshe will end impunity for those responsible.

If he follows through, that would put him atoddswiththehigh-rankingAngolanofficials involved in the multibillion-dollar collapse of Banco Espírito Santo Angola in 2014, to name but one example.

Dos Santos’s children – particularly Isabel, the head of national oil company Sonangol, and José Filomeno, chairman of Angola’s sovereign wealth fund –are in

positions of authority, and vested interests will fight back against changes in the status quo. It is unlikely that Lourenço will be able to change the structures and culture, so he may open up a longer and more significant transition.

“We are heading into a situation where, for the first time in many years, it’s hard to know exactly how things will play out,” says Rafael Marques de Morais, an Angolan journalist and anti-corruption campaigner. “There is a new level of uncertainty.”

CONTINUITY ONLY

Angola is due to hold a general election in August. Under the terms of its 2010 constitution, the president and vice-president are chosen from the top of the list of the party that wins the most parliamentary votes. Thus, should the MPLA win – as is expected, given the benefits of incumbency and government ability to restrict the political space – Lourenço will become the new president, with Bornito de THE AFRICA REPORT

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Despite being the continuity candidate, Lourenço also offers a chance for the MPLA to rebrand. The length of Dos Santos’s tenure – which began in 1979 and made him Africa’s second-longestserving president behind Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema – had become a focal point for his critics, both internal and external. Removing him from the MPLA neutralises this avenue for opposition parties.

JOOST DE RAEYMAEKER/EPA

FACEBOOK-FRIENDLY

Sousa, the minister of territorial administration, as his vice-president.

Soviet-educated Lourenço is an MPLA stalwart with a distinguished military career and many years of experience in public office. He has served as MPLA secretary general and first vice-president of the national assembly, was named defence minister in 2014, and then vice-president of the MPLA in the second half of 2016. He spent quite some time in the political wilderness after publicly supporting Dos Santos’s retirement in the early 2000s when the president was toying with the idea.

“I don’t think we should expect too much from João Lourenço, apart from continuity,” says Søren Kirk Jensen, an associate fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House. Indeed, while Dos Santos has been dubbed by party propaganda the “architect of peace”, Lourenço, 63, is now being portrayed as the “timoneiro da paz” (helmsman of peace) – in essence, the man to keep the ship on course.

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power in the presidency, to suggest that he might voluntarily reduce the influence of the president’s office and create more checks and balances. Marques de Morais remains unconvinced: “If Lourenço were a man of integrity, he would have demanded to be elected as leader of the MPLA in an open vote, rather than just accept this appointment, which gives him no legitimacy as a candidate.”

Lourenço’s most-pressing challenge in the short-term will be to ensure the MPLA secures enough votes to maintain its parliamentary majority. Then he must set about trying to rescue Angola’s sinking economy in order to create jobs for an increasingly disaffected and vocal youth.

Six parties and a coalition will take on the MPLA in the general election, although only a handful of these are expected to score enough votes to secure seats in parliament. The União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), the MPLA’s former civil war adversary, remains the largest opposition party with 32 parliamentary seats. It hopes to exploit dissatisfaction with the economy and social conditions to grow its influence.

It will face stiff competition from Convergência Ampla de Salvação de Angola-Coligação Eleitoral (CASA-CE), led by thecharismatic Abel Chivukuvuku.

The former UNITA man defected to form a new party just months before the 2012 election and from nowhere won 6% of the vote and eight places in the national assembly. Chivukuvuku is popular among urban youth and could attract frustrated middle-class MPLA voters, but hiscoalitionlacksthegrassrootsnetworks and resources of the larger party.

Since his candidacy was announced, Lourenço has been working hard to spruce up his somewhat dour public image. In addition to appearing at introductory rallies in different provinces around the country, he has taken to social media – significant in a country where few government ministries have functioning websites.

The 63-year-old’s newly launched Facebook page is full of photographs of the politician smiling and in casual clothes, surrounded by children, and in one case a pet dog. The posts are accompaniedbypositivemessagesaboutfeeling “motivated”, “confident” and “happy”.

This attempt by Lourenço to appeal to the ordinary Angolan as a modern everymancontrastssharplywiththetrademark aloofness of Dos Santos, who has made few public appearances during his long rule and seldom speaks off-script or to the media. Lourenço’s public speeches have focussed on “o povo” (the people) and boosting social development.

Graft permeates all levels of society. It has also played a major role in cementing Dos Santos’s rule. Lourenço is set to inherit a tangled web of patronage and a failing economy, and that leaves him little capacity to In contrast to Dos Santos’s quench powerful thirsts. aloofness, Lourenço tries to Marques de Morais is appeal as a modern everyman sceptical of the new MPLA leader’s commitment to Both CASA-CE and UNITA will strugtackling graft. “João Lourenço is no gle to make their voices heard above moderniser; he’s your typical political the MPLA, which is loudly promoted commissar, and very much part of the partymachinery,whoreadsofftheofficial by the state-owned media and has a script,” he says. Rejecting suggestions hegemonic grip on all the economy and from some analysts that Lourenço may state institutions, as well as permeating arts, culture and sport. help reform the MPLA, he adds: “We Allegations that the MPLA is meddon’t need more discipline or top-down control. What Angola needs is a democrat dling with electoral processes for its to build institutions. That is what we lack.” own ends have already begun to surface, Supporters point to Lourenço’s early and few have faith in the integrity of the ties to former MPLA secretary general voting system or the judicial apparatus in place to hold it to account.

Lopo do Nascimento, who was a strong Louise Redvers critic of Dos Santos’s consolidation of

42 POLITICS

Joseph Boakai

Vice-president, Liberia

Sometimes we didn’t follow through As October elections approach, Boakai is hopeful of winning the presidency, but is caught in a tough scramble to convince Liberians he embodies change

S

itting in an elegant r o o m i n Pa r i s’s Prince de Galles hotel – in a respite between meetings in Geneva and London – the d eb o na i r, s e p t u ag e na r i a n vice-president of Liberia talks up his chances for the upcoming presidential election. Joseph Boakai’s light grey suit is pierced with the Liberian flag and United Party (UP) lapel pins. The UP has been in power for almost 12 years, and the political brand is, to be polite, a little tired.

While the initial years of the administration saw some major successes, expectations have outstripped delivery for some time.

Indeed, supporters are only half joking when they tell Boakai not to lean on the link to the UP. “They say put your face on the T-shirt, not the UP logo,” says Boakai.

To have a chance of winning, he needs to weld together disparate support bases, and that is not easy when high-profile UP members are quitting the party.

Even President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who asked Boakai to run, appears unclear about her choice.

Reports from UP members claim Johnson Sirleaf is surreptitiously supporting another candidate, the flag-bearer of the Liberty

Party, Charles Brumskine. “I do have the backing of the President,” says Boakai, dismissing the idea.

“She said [I should run] publicly.”

The political authority Boakai has derives from his role as vice-president. “A vice-president is not a simple thing to be,” he says.

“You assist the president, which is a very complicated thing. You intervene where you are needed.”

He goes on to mention a number of land disputes in the capital which required his mediation.

POLITICAL CONSENSUS

But for many, through no fault of his own, he has not had the high-profile diplomatic and economic roles that would help build a case for him taking over the executive. Where he can claim credit is for building a political consensus, even at difficult junctures. He points to when Johnson Sirleaf wanted to get confirmation through the Senate for the appointment of a non-Liberian to run the army, in the face of push-back from politicians of all stripes. “She said: ‘Look, this will be difficult.’ But I said: ‘No, the Armed Forces Day is coming up. We will get him confirmed by then,’ and we did.”

And he had much more of that consensus building to do in the

MEET THE VEEP 1944 Born in Lofa County 1973 Manager, then CEO, of Liberia’s produce marketing corp.

1983 Becomes agriculture minister 2005 Selected as running mate for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf 2017 Anointed as the flag-bearer for the Unity Party in presidential elections

administration’s second term.

The first term of the Johnson Sirleaf government brought a robust approach to mending political divides and peace building.

She then received an array of international accolades, which Boakai says may have taken her attention off the problems the country was facing. “Sometimes we forget that the country comes first. It’s the people that elected you and those are the people who you are likely to touch,” he says.

“Sometimes, along the way, we didn’t follow through – disgrunt­ ling the people. And I’m aware of that. But as time went on, different players came on board, and [maybe] the President became more international.”

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could well defeat Boakai and the UP. The fact that he hails from Lofa, the most populated county, may help in giving Boakai the votes he needs.

One of his policy passions is agriculture, having served as minister for agriculture between 1983 and 1985. He points to work done in Ethiopia, where the government has trained thousands of extension workers to help get new seeds, inputs and skills to farmers. “Agriculture is not a stand-alone thing,” he says. He stresses that “good policy, technology transfer and extension” are needed to reach the millions of Liberians struggling with low agricultural productivity.

BAO DANDAN/XINHUA/MAXPPP

LAND DISPUTES

for appointing her sons to high office. Robert Sirleaf chaired the board of the national oil company, and it subsequently hit severe financial troubles.

Boakai hopes his own more modest beginnings will be seen more favourably. He speaks of his difficult childhood growing up with relatives. “A lot of people who become presidents have some strong family orientation. Mine is not a story that you can associate with upbringing from the home,” says Boakai, recalling his self-motivated past, working as a janitor.

CORRUPTION IS A PROCESS

And he says he wants to tackle corruption at the root. “I don’t think corruption is some light pole out there you can just take down. No. You need a strategy.

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process,” offers Boakai. “I have had many opportunities to become a wealthy person, but I have never been a person to believe in ill-gotten wealth. I have to be that example that I want people to see and follow.”

He will have to fight through the electoral maths first. In the

“The problem here is a lot of people who are outside try to dictate everything to us” 2005 and 2011 presidential elections, Congress for Democratic Change flag-bearer George Weah offered the strongest opposition.

But with affluent and Westerneducated politicians like Benoni Urey, Alexander Cummings and erstwhile Central Bank of Liberia governor Joseph Mills Jones mounting a challenge, a coalition

He does not see the entry of large agribusiness ventures into the palm oil sector as a problem for farmers. “There is no land grabbing in Liberia. That, I disagree with,” says Boakai. Land ownership is a major issue in Liberia, with many criminals involved in selling land that is not theirs.

To address this concern, the government created the Land Commission in 2009 to help mediate in land disputes.

Local activists have accused Indonesian investors of pushing farmers off their land with the help of government officials.

Boakai says: “You know the problem here is a lot of people who are outside try to dictate everything to us. They make people feel that there is land grabbing, when that is not the case.”

The mining sector seemed to hold so much promise in Johnson Sirleaf’s first term. But companies like ArcelorMittal downsized their operations after the steel price collapse. These deals have benefited the country in a number of ways, but grievances against these foreign companies have increased, says Boakai. “ArcelorMittal is there. But when you sign these concessions in good faith, they look after themselves [instead].

There are a lot of things that they were supposed to do that they are not doing.”

Interview by Robert Clarke

44

Does Europe’s right-turn matter for Africa?

G

rand corruption and galloping inequality, populism and ultra-nationalism, electoral fraud and foreign influence are all familiar boxes to tick on Anansi’s political checklist. Progressive activists in Africa have been railing against them for years, and now they are winning some of the arguments.

The latest poll from Afrobarometer, the respected opinion survey team, found that at least 70% of Africans surveyed reject non-democratic forms of government and want to see more political openness. Most of those surveyed want far tougher action by an independent judiciary against political and corporate corruption. Again, most South Africans say the Constitutional Court should hold the executive and the legislature to account and uphold the spirit of the constitution agreed after liberation.

At a weekend conference in Marrakech on 7-9 April, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation marked a decade of campaigning for better governance and developing the data and research tools to monitor and promote higher standards. Its latest report – Africa at a Tipping Point – focuses on evidence-based analysis and is vital for anyone looking at the continent’s prospects.

A missing element was raised time and again during the conference: What is happening north of Africa? Europe, that constant factor in recent African history – from brutality and exploitation to its self-styled role as development partner – is in trouble politically and economically.

In April, Marine Le Pen took the Front National, an ultra-right party with links to shadowy nationalist groups across Europe, into the second round of France’s presidential elections. That was just a few months after Brexiteers – who campaigned for Britain to quit the European Union – and Donald Trump’s populist legions in the United States celebrated their electoral triumphs. Many financiers of the Brexit and Trump campaigns are discreetly backing Le Pen. French pollsters strongly favour the centre-right candidate Emmanuel Macron to win in the second round. Their figures look convincing, unless Le Pen’s savvy

campaign can dig up some horrendous scandal about Macron or goad him into a crass faux pas. But even a Macron victory with 60% of the vote presumes a siren of the ultra-right getting some 40%.

Meanwhile, the voice of the ultrarightists and xenophobes is getting louder in the Netherlands – where they fell short of victory but boosted their vote – and in Austria, where a neo-Nazi party lost the presidential polls by a whisker.

Even in Greece, which sees itself as the cradle of democracy, there Europe is a fascist party revelling in the is in trouble title of Golden Dawn.

Only in Germany, where politically and memories of the extreme right’s economically. atrocities are at their sharpest some 70 years on, does the politThis will ical establishment, in the shape impact tens of Chancellor Angela Merkel, have a credible moral and ecoof millions nomic response to the yahoos of Africans of the ultra-right. living there, The rise and rise of the ultraright raises harsh questions about while Europe’s political health. Beyond protectionism the role of organisations such as Cambridge Analytica – financed will hit Africa by billionaires to promote a tsunaharder still mi of ultra-right and “post-truth” propaganda – there is the role of tax-evading media barons. Also, rightist parties have developed ever more sophisticated tactics of voter suppression, to keep leftists and minorities from the polling booth. Russia’s spy bosses in the FSB and corporate-backed parties have been breaking laws on campaign finance but are facing no sanctions.

This all matters hugely for Africa. In a direct sense, it will impact the tens of millions of Africans living in Europe. Economic destabilisation and protectionism will hit the continent still harder. And there is a bigger philosophical point made by a Senegalese academic visiting Paris during the elections: If Europe cannot face down the demons of its last conflagration, which killed more than 50 million civilians, he asks, what conclusion should be drawn by ambitious politicians in Africa?

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Ghana

Galamsey gamble The government wants to tackle unregulated smallscale mining as a means to reassure big foreign miners and to create jobs, but the mining industry feeds into criminality and environmental despoliation.

The clock is ticking for the new government to find solutions that work for actors big and small Text by Billie Adwoa McTernan and pictures by Francis Kokoroko in Obuasi

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E

Small-scale miners risk their lives for scraps of gold in Obuasi

arly last year, as the ochre dust of the harmattan blew through the hills of Obuasi, overlooking one of the world’s richest gold reserves, hundreds of prospectors seized control of the mine concession owned by South Africa’s AngloGold Ashanti. Days earlier, the government had withdrawn its soldiers after a spate of attacks on the mine site, about 250km north of Accra. The fight in Obuasi has become a symbol of the crisis in Ghana’s mining industry, and its failure to benefit wider society.

46 COUNTRY FOCUS | GHANA

Government officials failed to explain why they withdrew security from such an important asset, although insiders spoke of shadowy political manoeuvrings behind the scenes. One version had Ibrahim Mahama, brother to the then-president John Mahama, trying to intervene in the dispute. Ibrahim was said to have nursed a long-standing rivalry with mining magnate Sam Jonah, a former president of AngloGold who had tried to broker a deal with the smallscale miners demanding the right to work on the company’s concession. The death of John Owusu, a popular local mine official, during a confrontation on the site showed how the crisis was spinning out of control.

InJohannesburg,the AngloGold board lost patience with the negotiations in Obuasi and filed a suit against Ghana at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington DC. “If allowed to continue unchecked, this occupation of the lease area by illegal miners significantly undermines investor confidence and gravely threatens the long-term viability of the mine,” AngloGold told the tribunal.

Ofori-Atta also wants to set up a biannual forum between government and the chief executives of the top five local mining companies to improve trust and assure them of ‘policy stability’. But the more complex tasks are how to manage small-scale mining, to improve working conditions and safety VESTED INTERESTS standards, and to integrate the mining industry into the wider economy.

Galamsey – or small-scale miners – have become an easy target. They are accused Plans for a mineral development fund of horrendous environmental damage, to direct investment to local mining communities have long been cuttingdownforests,poisonon the drawing board. ing rivers with mercury and cyanide, and exploiting child Now, the minister for labour. But their operations lands and natural resourcwere facilitated and often es John Peter Amewu says there will be a new financed by local and foreign business networks that pay strategy for miners. But off local chieftains, politihis promise – at the start of April –to end illegal smallcians and security officers. scale mining within three It was those vested inweeks has been met with terests that helped keep Value of gold widespread scepticism. the galamsey story out of exported from illegal This is partly because last year’s general elecmining in 2016 most small-scale mining tion campaign. A third of SOURCE: MINISTRY OF LANDS AND NATURAL RESOURCES is, by definition, illegal, the Ghana’s gold is produced product of desperation. by small-scale miners, a David Masterwille, who makes docbusiness that turns over hundreds of millions of dollars, with workers earning umentaries on the subject, is wary of a pittance and their sponsors often government promises. Although smallevading taxes and regulations. scale miners get most of the blame for the environmental devastation, President Nana Akufo-Addo’s government pledged to change all that, Masterwille argues that the big comand is now faced with one of its most panies must do much more. demanding tests. Finance minister Ken AroundObuasi,atownofsome180,000 people, 80% of the rivers and lakes are Ofori-Attasaysresolvingtheimpassewith reckoned to be polluted with mining AngloGold over Obuasi is a top priority.

Many say the arbitration case could be chemicals. The town’s crisis peaked quietly settled in the coming months. when AngloGold suspended operations

2.3m

$

in November 2014 and laid off 6,000 workers, claiming the fall in the gold price had made the mine uneconomic.

In the town centre, local men sit around playing draughts. Many of them are former AngloGold workers looking for work. “They should open the mine,” one of the men tells The Africa Report, “so Obuasi doesn’t become a ghost town.”

NEW GOLD RUSH

Samuel Atta, a father of four, worked with AngloGold for 17 years. Like many of his fellow workers, he got a redundancy package of 100,000 ($24,000) when the mine closed. But with no other job prospects locally, he says he is struggling to get by after paying rent and school fees.

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KImi, que maio ent eventia sum con rest eum fugitaquia consed mos susandicius in nim

Clockwise from left: Makeshift shelters house a growing community of small-scale miners in Obuasi; descending the mine shaft; ex-employees of the closed AngloGold Ashanti mine play draughts; gold purchased from small-scale miners

485km² concession, the biggest in Ghana, in a new gold rush. That’s when the fighting started. By September 2016, local groups, backed by the minerals commission in Accra, formed a movement committee to secure a deal under which AngloGold would relinquish some 60% of its concession to small-scale miners.

Led by local organisers such as Benjamin Annan, spokesman for the Association of Small Scale Miners, some of the miners moved to a site at Abedwum, on the outskirts of town. It is on part of the land relinquished by AngloGold, but small-scale miners have been working on the land for years.

And local businesses – selling torches, batteries, and steaming plates of food – have grown up around those mining operations. Each morning at THE AFRICA REPORT

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dawn, workers trudge to the mine to extract more of the dark mud and rock that when processed will yield gold ore. “In our community, mining has been a part of our lives,” says one who requested anonymity. “We got to know it when we are growing up; it’s a skill we have developed.”

MAKESHIFT LADDERS

Conditions are tough. Teams of miners dig narrow shafts into the bowels of the earth with rudimentary tools. The chisellers follow them, chipping away at the rock in search of tell-tale gold streaks.

“The pits can go about 60m deep,” Annan says. At sites like Abedwum, workers use makeshift ladders to get down to the rock face, but they face many geological and environmental problems.

“At the level we are now digging at, water has started coming. We’re not getting access like we used to,” said a leader of the site’s security task force who has been working on the site for seven years. “We need investment [from government] in machines and water pumps that will engage us and not foreigners,” another miner says.

One of the first Obuasi gold rushes dates back to 1897, when British merchant Edwin Arthur Cade pitched up and negotiated a concession with the local paramount leaders. Gold mining in the area dates back centuries. The explorer Richard Burton referred to reports of those local riches when he spoke of an Eldorado in West Africa. The British colonial authorities quickly tried to bring the area under their control, granting mammoth concessions and banning local small-scale mining.

“When [the forerunner of ] Ashanti Goldfields acquired the concession in 1897, we didn’t have a limit to concession size. So they were given 485km² […]. It covered five administrative districts: Obuasi, Bekwai, Adansi North and South, and Amansie Central,” says Richard Ellimah, executive director of the Centre for Social Impact Studies (CeSIS). Now, the population of these

48 COUNTRY FOCUS | GHANA

Amewu and Akufo-Addo have staked the government’s reputation on dealing with the small-scale mining crisis in a way that will formalise and regulate the industry but also create jobs and attract investments. Mining accounts for 5.5% of Ghana’s gross domestic product and more than 35% of its exports.

COLONIAL ECONOMY

The River Pra, a source of drinking water, is heavily polluted; illegal mining has been blamed

districts is close to 500,000 and mining is the main source of work.

In 2006, the government passed a new law to limit the size of concessions. But Ellimah says that AngloGold’s concession still exceeds that limit, even after it ceded 60% of the land.

The government wants AngloGold’s reallocation deal to set a precedent for other companies, such as Newmont and Goldfields, to cut down their concession sizes. Belatedly, big companies have realised the political importance of small-scale miners.

InGhana,rurallandismostlyparcelled out by chiefs. But the subsoil, which holds the minerals, belongs to the state, which leases out the rights to exploit it. However, many of the small-scale miners do not go through the complex leasing process and instead cut deals directly with chiefs or other local officials.

A deal between then-president John Kufuor’s government and Canada’s Newmont Gold, dating back to 2006, has been much criticised by activists. It allows Newmont to hold a 100% stake in the Ahafo mine, to receive extensive concessions on import duties and to benefit from exemptions from value-added tax.

and the minerals commission has issued only1,000small-scalelicencessince1989.

According to the South China Morning Post an estimated 50,000 illegal prospectors from China – many from Shanglin county, where there is much mining expertise – have set up small-scale businesses in Ghana. Although it is illegal for non-Ghanaians to go into small-scale mining, prospectors from China bring in mining equipment and set up illegal and lucrative operations with local partners.

Much of the responsibility for the spike inillegaloperationsshouldfall oncorrupt officials, says CeSIS’s Ellimah: “I think the politicians are involved; our chiefs too are involved. The police will not do anything, and you realise the military [is also] part of the problem.” Ellimah is sceptical of reports of arrests: “It’s like a PR gimmick to throw dust in people’s eyes. [Chinese people] are arrested, and the next day they are released. Who released them?”

Survey of small-scale gold miners Why did you become involved in small-scale gold mining?

Ohia (poverty or financial hardship)

“In 2011, Newmont made a profit of $700m from the Ahafo mine. The Ghana government could have easily taken [a shareholding and] $70m,” complains CeSIS’s Ellimah. He also warns that the small-scale mining issue is bigger and more complex than most officials think.

He reckons there are about 500,000 illegal miners operating in Ghana. Official figures put the number at about 50,000,

SOURCE: KWADWO AFRIYIEA ET AL., 2016

CHINESE PROSPECTORS

Lack of agriculture land

84

55

Lack of employment opportunity

30

I want to get rich quickly

7

Lack of education

6

Other reasons

1

TOTAL

193

Gold exports alone had a value of $1.2bn between February 2016 and February 2017, according to the Bank of Ghana.

Those figures do not include the substantial illegal exports on which no tax or royalties are paid, as well as all service operations that support mining.

“We’re running a colonial economy,” says Yao Graham, coordinator of Third World Network-Africa, a policy advocacy organisation. “The state, historically, has been interested in minerals that generate foreign exchange, minerals of interest to foreign capital.”

Graham argues that a serious industrial development strategy in Ghana would treat small-scale mining with as much seriousness as government gives to the mining conglomerates. With small- and medium-scale companies creating the most jobs, Graham says it should be a political imperative for government to strengthen links between small-scale mining and other economic sectors.

Back in Obuasi, many people want to see AngloGold resume operations, but they also seek some guarantees about jobs and working conditions. Officials at AngloGold tell The Africa Report that they are working on plans to reopen the mine.

In April, AngloGold announced that it will recruit some 2,000 workers – less than a third of its previous labour force.

That is not going to fire up the Obuasi economy again. Perhaps a better deal for small-scale miners could play a part there, with more imaginative policies from minister Amewu.

But for now, Obuasi town remains to be convinced – either by big mining or the government. Tina, who lives in Obuasi and runs a guesthouse, says the town’s economy has been rocked by the mine’s suspension. If business does not pick up, Tina says she may leave Obuasi to seek work abroad. “We're hoping that this government will do something […].

If not, in four years’ time it will be very difficult for him [President Akufo-Addo].

Who is going to vote for him?”

Additional reporting by Patrick Smith in Accra

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50 COUNTRY FOCUS | GHANA

Theo Sackey Chief executive, Cenpower

Create an African institution with international standards TAR: Given some of the instabilities in the economy, were there difficulties in raising finance?

THEO SACKEY: There were huge difficulties because you need people who are committed and who are going to sell their shirts.

But your shirt is not enough, you need to have a coat too. They found a good site. They did the right studies. They were able to attract financing support in the form of a partnership with a company called InfraCo. These guys then brought in additional money and support. They did the studies up to a point, and that was when the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) got in.

What were the other challenges?

When AFC got into the project, InfraCo and the founding shareholders had a power purchase agreement with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), but after our analysis it was obvious that [it] was not bankable. At that time, [Ghana] didn’t have gas. The gas was going to come in from Nigeria. We hadn’t even found oil yet, and the West African Gas Pipeline was still being built.

We changed the whole thing and said forget about gas being the only source of electricity. Let’s go out to the market and ask people to bid again to give us a thermal power plant that can use gas, light crude oil, diesel or anything else.

Fortunately for us, in 2009/10, after the financial crisis, a lot of projects had been cancelled. So we were able to get lots of interest.

However, in order to make this project bankable Cenpower had to take on a lot of responsibilities.

In our instance, ECG was adamant that it would not provide the fuel.

So we had to make investments in fuel development facilities.

Little things increased the cost because of the structuring of the project, but c’est la vie. Then, of course, the bottom line of that was: Does it still bring the project cost in line with what the public utilities regulatory commission

“It’s acknowledging we can play at the highest level: principles, values, attitude” would agree? So we had to present our financial case to them, give them the models. They reviewed it. They were comfortable and gave the green light to ECG. What is the pricing model like with the ECG? There’s a power purchase agreement. [It] has a very detailed formula […]. They have their models, so every month they would look: How much did we ask you, and how much did you give us? If you gave us all of this, then you’ll have your fixed charge. How much

CENPOWER

Cenpower will launch its $900m Kpone independent power plant (IPP) at the end of the year, reducing blackouts in Accra was the price of fuel? Was it $60 per barrel or was it $70 per barrel?

If you have gas, is it $5 per million BTU or is $10 per million BTU? The calculations are based on this.

What will this project do for Ghana in terms of power and the economy?

It will provide 350MW in addition to what’s already available – that’s about 13%. For now, over the construction period we have about 1,500 people employed and 90% of them are Ghanaians. When the construction is over and we get into the operational period, the project is going to employ 65 to 70 people for the next 20 years. We are increasing the skills sets of the people in the project so they will be able to work on other projects.

With Cenpower, there is significant local participation in the shareholding structure – 21% belongs to Ghanaians. You have the AFC [with 46%], which is also African – we also have a large voice in how this company operates and how its DNA gets created. The whole idea is to create an African institution with international standards. It’s acknowledging the fact that we can play at the highest level:properprinciples,proper values, the right attitude, to create an institution that can stand with any other international institution.

Interview by Billie McTernan and Animie Azidizian in Accra

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Importers and exporters are calling for bigger and better ports to facilitate trade

BUSINESS

An executive wish list

From clearer regulation of mobile money to cheaper electricity, the government has to act decisively – and quickly – to keep the business community on its side

T

o packed crowds at Accra’s Black Star Square on 7 January, President NanaAkufo-Addointoned:“Ghana is open for business again!” He devoted a substantial part of his speech to strengthening the idea that his National Patriotic Party (NPP) is the party of business, saying: “We will stimulate the creative juices of innovators. We will bring back to life the adventurer in you. It is time to imagine and to dream again; time to try that business idea again. We will reduce taxes to recover the momentum of our economy.”

Government officials have been meeting with bankers and industrialists to better understand what business wants from Akufo-Addo’s term in office. Flagship government policies, such as reducing interest rates, improving electricity provision and setting up factories and dams in every district, have been designed to improve the business environment and foster development.

Early dialogue between the government and private-sector representatives has so far been positive, according to both sides. Vice-president Mahamudu

Bawumia – an economist and former banker – is heading up the government’s Economic Management Team, which meets every week and is crafting policies.

Many concerns of the business community relate to macroeconomic conditions, which have suffered due to government mismanagement and the drop in oil and gold prices. Each CHALLENGING CONDITIONS sector has its own complaints and wish The Association of Ghana Industries lists for government policies. Traders of imported goods and exporters have surveys its members in order to identify the biggest challenges that firms face and some common ground on questions the problems they want addressed. The relating to infrastructure, but differ on most serious problems for companies taxation and industrial policy. surveyed in the third quarWith a new governor, ter of 2016 were the cost of Ernest Addison, at the utilities, delayed payments, helm of the central bank, access to credit, the high Alhassan Andani, the chief number of taxes and the executive of Stanbic Bank, tells The Africa Report he is depreciation of the cedi. confident that the Bank of The top challenges, Ghana will move in a direchowever, differ by sector: tion conducive to strengthpayments was the bête ening the banking sector. noire of the construction A 2016 Private Deregulation, he says, is industry, while manuEnterprise key to getting more local facturers took issue with Federation survey taxes. Companies also want private-sector participation found that almost better infrastructure, from and investment. half of industries Businesses have long roadstoportsandrailroads. experienced power Executives want action on criticised Ghana’s high outages from six these fronts, and fast. to 10 times per month interest rates. “Drop

48%

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APM TERMINALS

52

54 COUNTRY FOCUS | GHANA

the cost of finance,” value-addedtaxonmobilesays that the Akufo-Addo administration money transactions.

Andani says,“sopeoplecan decisions to cut taxes and reduce interest Stanbic’s Andani says rates in the first 100 days of his term are get real yields as dividends.

As the cost of borrowing the sort of encouraging policies that the clearer regulations are comes down, the real reprivate sector needs. needed for mobile money.

Electricity and currency stability are turnontherealsectorofthe He says:“We should get toa economy, which is what we placewhereweunderstand two of the problems that PEF members do on the stock exchange, that digital space – who would like to see government action becomes more attractive.” owns it and who uses it. If on first. Osei Bonsu told the media in you allow telcos to do this, mid-April: “One of the main concerns of Andani also calls for Estimated growth who is regulating them? the private sector is energy - not just the more local participation of credit to the private The National Commun­ availability but the cost as well.” Thenin the stock market. “If you sector in 2016, down take some of these compresident John Mahama’s government ications Authority? The from 24.7% in 2015 panies that generate local approved a 59.2% rise in electricity tariffs central bank?”

SOURCE: INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND in December 2015 because of the pubOthers do not share that currency and sell them to view. IT Consortium chief lic utilities’ greater reliance on costlier foreigners, you’ll have to executive Romeo Bugyei has called on thermal power. Bonsu says that more has find forex to go back to the owners,” he to be done to encourage investment in the government to allow the financial points out. “But if you localise it, all the renewables like solar and wind power. earnings stay in Ghana. We have to avoid technology (fintech) industry to develop selling all these entities and making them and grow before creating any new reguladependent on foreign capital.”

ONE DISTRICT, ONE FACTORY tions that might stifle it. As fintech works with banks and financial institutions to Managing director of CAL Bank Frank While the PEF supports the government’s Adu agrees with Andani that more local take deposits, companies in turn are ‘one district, one factory’ policy, Bonsu participation in the economy, fostering says that Accra must ensure it does not indirectly regulated by the central bank, public-privatepartnerships and develophe argues. Bugyei says further regulation privilege companies from the capital. ing locally owned equity funds will push would hamper innovation. With the lack He told local reporters: “We didn’t want of regulatory clarity hanging over the businesses coming from Accra to take economic development. Speaking on a panel at theUniversityof Ghana Business sector, in April communications minister opportunitiesinthedistrictsandgoback.”

School at Legon in April, Adu added that Ursula Owusu-Ekuful announced plans Also high on the PEF’s agenda for the for a new law covering mobile money new government is a focus on funding, government should consider tax reforms that both reduce income inequality and and fintech. especially for agriculture. Osei Bonsu bring more people into the formal sector.

The Private Enterprise Federation is championing the idea that pensions should be reformed so that more money (PEF) – the umbrella grouping that inHUB DREAMS cludes sectoral business bodies, includis directed to the local private sector. On ing the Ghana Chamber of Commerce Ghana faces stiff competition from relations with the government so far, Osei and Industry and Ghana Chamber of Bonsu told reporters: “We talked about Nigeria as it strives to become a regional banking hub. Currently, there are five the tax reductions, value-added tax (VAT) Mines – was critical of the former govNigerian banks present in Ghana and ernment’s lack of progress on electricity reduction, VAT on financial services – all and has so far avoided criticising the those have been taken care of.” no Ghanaian banks operating in Nigeria.

In March, Mike Nyinaku, chief executive new government during its honeymoon Private-sector players are also calling of the Beige Group, cautioned against phase. PEF president Nana Osei Bonsu on the government to review the interim Ghanaianbanksbeingtooquicktomerge, EconomicPartnershipAgreementsigned as the Bank of Ghana plans to announce with the European Union, for fear that How’s Ghana doing for business? the new minimum capital requirement it will hurt exporters and the country’s (scale: rank 190 centre, rank 1 outer edge) by the end of April. He argues that young industries. Trade minister Alan the new capital requirements Kyerematen is unlikely to do much about Starting a business 110 could strengthen the hand of such calls, as he wants the Economic Resolving insolvency foreign investors.

Community of West African States 117 Dealing with 155 construction With mobile-money transto go ahead with the trade deal permits actionsbecomingmore popular, while seeking to maximise its banks are having to contend advantages and reduce its 120 Getting 114 with telecoms companies. In disadvantages. electricity Enforcing Businesses are not all praisJanuary, telcos kicked against contracts ing the NPP. After the governthe Bank of Ghana’s proposal ment issued a new round of to have an intermediary 77 Registering 154 tax incentives, Dalex Finance for cross-network transacproperty Trading across tions, arguing that it would chief executive Kenneth borders Kwamina Thompson told local increase costs. In November 44 Getting credit 122 2016, the Ghana Chamber of media: “Some of the tax incentives Paying taxes Telecoms pushed back and got the introduced have very marginal effects on 87 Protecting minority investors the development of the private sector.” previous government to reverse SOURCE: WORLD BANK DOING BUSINESS RANKINGS Billie Adwoa McTernan in Accra course on a planned introduction of

7.4%

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PEOPLE TO WATCH

Out with the old, in with the new

The December 2016 election victory of Nana Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party has brought a host of fresh faces to government, with more perhaps to come

AIRTEL GHANA

In the private sector, a merger between Tigo Ghana and Airtel Ghana may put current Airtel managing director Lucy Quist in a precarious position: Airtel chief executive Roshi Motman is set to lead the newly merged company.

The first Ghanaian woman to head a telecoms company, Quist joined Airtel in 2014 after leaving Vodafone Ghana, where she was head of strategy and planning.

Under the new agreement, Airtel will put forward a board chairperson and chief financial officer. Though she will remain in her position until the end of the year to facilitate the merger, sources say Quist may leave the private sector for public service.

PRESIDENCY

CENTR AL BANK OF GHANA

Akosua Frema Osei-Opare Right-hand woman

Ernest Addison New man at the helm

Nana Akufo-Addo is the first Ghanaian president to appoint a woman as his chief of staff: Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, who, prior to her appointment, was a development consultant, a lecturer at the University of Ghana, Legon and country director for the non-governmental organisation ActionAid. OseiOpare last held a cabinet position in the government of John Kufuor, where she was deputy minister of manpower development, youth and employment.

Shortly after Ghana’s new government discovered a $1.6bn hole in its budget, news that central bank governor Abdul-Nashiru Issahaku was under scrutiny risked causing a further dent to investor confidence. Issahaku resigned three years before the end of his tenure citing personal reasons. Filling his shoes is Ernest Addison, who was head of research at the central bank from 2003 to 2011 before becoming the lead regional economist for the African Development Bank. Addison is expected to tread a middle path between price stability and economic growth. His first test was at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) spring meetings, where he stated that the central bank would not finance the government’s deficit, despite a law passed in 2016 allowing it that by breaching terms of the IMF’s $918m aid deal.

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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Lucy Quist Mergers and moving on

GHANA | COUNTRY FOCUS 57

GHANA INVESTMENT PROMOTION CENTRE

Shirley Ayorkor Botchway Doing more with less

Yoofi Grant Selling Ghana

A deputy foreign affairs minister during the Kufuor administration and a well-regarded stateswoman, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway’s appointment as foreign minister was one of the less controversial of Akufo-Addo’s nominations.

But just a few months into office, she has to deal with financial hurdles that will make it hard to deliver on the government’s promises to the diaspora and its missions abroad.

In March, the finance ministry reduced her funding to only 35% of internally generated funds, a move that Botchway says will make it challenging to pay a $50m loan from Société Générale secured in 2016 to upgrade and renovate its missions and embassies.

An investment banker with more than three decades of experience, Yoofi Grant took over as CEO of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre earlier this year, following his appointment

by Akufo-Addo. Grant’s colleagues are currently setting up a database for investors charting opportunities and investible assets. A psychology graduate from the University of Ghana, he is a director of Databank Group – the firm founded by finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta – where he worked in business development and private equity.

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60

debates Tough talk on development

Is Africa’s development an illusion?

SIMON DIFAZIO

COMPANIES & MARKETS 61

As the continent’s major economies begin to recover from the commodity crunch, how inclusive is its growth?

Panellists laid out the arguments at The Africa Report Debate, on the sidelines of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s African governance weekend in Marrakech in early April

By Nicholas Norbrook in Marrakech

ILLUSTRATION BY ANTOINE MOREAU-DUSAULT FOR TAR

A

s Sudanese businessman and philanthropist Mo Ibrahim so memorably put it at the start of our 7 April debate in Marrakech: “What the hell is going on in Africa?” After a decade of progress, things are suddenly stagnating, or worse. Is the continent back to the old cycles of political and economic boom and bust or are things more democratic and diversified today? The fifth edition of The Africa Report Debates asked the question: Is Africa’s development an illusion?

With 54 countries on the continent, each case has its own dynamics. But trends do stand out. There has been clear progress in countries like Cabo Verde, Morocco, Mauritius and Côte d’Ivoire, and impressive transfers of political power in Nigeria and Ghana, despite hard-fought elections. Meanwhile, some big economies are foundering. The

70%

of Africans do not experience the effects of development on their daily lives VERA SONGWE, IFC

liberation movement is losing its way in South Africa, and Egypt has slipped under the yoke of the military. That is without mentioning that hunger is stalking the land in the Horn of Africa, South Sudan and northern Nigeria.

Donald Kaberuka, a former AfricanDevelopmentBank(AfDB) president,hasnotimeforpessimists.

Cast your minds back 50 years, he says,andmostexpertscalledAfrica “the future” and Asia “the basket case”. Things went relatively well untiltheoilshocksandsubsequent debtcrisis,whichtippedtheAfrican continent into 25 years of poverty and mayhem, he recounts.

But, after 2000, there was a reversal of fortunes, and the continent hasnotlookedback.Kaberukasays he understands the frustrations but argues that with population increases of around 3% per annum, it is natural that people feel current growth rates are

PICTURES BY SIMON DIFAZIO

62 BUSINESS | COMPANIES & MARKETS

BELOW A DOLLAR A DAY

“Finally, on poor infrastructure, I spent 10 years in the AfDB. We alone put out there $28bn of infrastructure – including the airport in Marrakech, including the airport in Casablanca,” Kaberuka insists.

“Everywhere I have been, we are making progress. It’s different from what it was in 1999. We are no longer a capital-hostile region.”

Vera Songwe, recently appointed as executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), but head of West and Central Africa at the International Finance Corporation at the time of this

African population & real GDP growth rate 1.5 Population (billions) 1.4

6

1.3

5

1.2

4

1.1

3

1 0.9

R Real GDP growth rate

0.8

PPopulation

0.7

2009

2011

2013

2 1

2015

2017

2019

0 2021

SOURCE: MO IBRAHIM FOUNDATION

% real GDP growth 7

Tertiary graduates by field of study 0% Djibouti Algeria Ghana Benin Tunisia Morocco Burkina Faso Zimbabwe Cameroon South Africa Mauritius Seychelles Ethiopia Gambia

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

the nine months of the year, that 70% of the population is essentially unemployed. It is this 70% of mostly women and young kids who do not see the great new health facility in Tangier or the fancy mall in Kenya. These are people who do not have a job, and they do not understand what is going on. What they have, however – thanks to [Safaricom chief executive] Bob Collymore – is a phone that tells them all the wonderful things that are happening in the airport and the malls. But they cannot get there because they do not have the incomes.”

GOVERNANCE CURSE

Arts & humanities Engineering, manufacturing & construction Information & communication technology

debate, says: “I’m glad that president Kaberuka talked about 1960 and where we started from […].

But look at Nigeria. Two-thirds of the population live on below a dollar a day. For them, this discussion about growth is an illusion.”

Songwe explains that with more than two-thirds of the population on the continent working in agriculture, “they only work three months a year, which means that for the rest of

SOURCE: MO IBRAHIM FOUNDATION

not enough. “Even if you have a 7% growth in gross domestic product (GDP), which under normal circumstances should double your GDP every 10 years, population increases simply eat it up,” says Kaberuka.

He points to what professors Paul Collier and Jan Willem Gunning wrote in 1999: that “Africa is a capital-hostile region”.

They gave four reasons: lack of openness to trade, a high-risk environment, a low level of social capital, and poor infrastructure.

“On lack of openness to trade, Africa has made huge progress – tariffs are down everywhere. We still have risks of some types but, as Mo Ibrahim likes to say often, how many companies have been nationalised in Africa in the past 25 years?,” asks Kaberuka, keen to point out the large advances made in social capital on the continent.

That divided experience can be seen across every development indicator, says Jon Marks, an energy specialist and founder of consultancy Cross-Border Information. This is especially true in electricity provision: “There are about 4 million people living in Dakar who get some power, while along the coast of Senegal and in the interior of the country, there are people who just live almost exclusivelywithoutpower,” hesays.

In essence, the problem is the glacial pace of Africa’s per capita GDP growth. In 1960, the GDP per capita of China was $89, but it grew to $8,000 by 2015. And it is not necessarily a ‘resource curse’ problem, whereby countries loaded with natural resources face challenges like overly strong currencies. In 1960, the GDP per capita of copper-producer Chile was $526, and today it is $13,000.

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COMPANIES & MARKETS | BUSINESS 63

For Songwe, the problem is not a resource curse but a governance curse. “Our leaders are on average 66 years old, and our population 25 years old. It is an illusion that our leaders represent us.”

Mohamed Ould Bouamatou, a Mauritanian businessman who created the Fondation pour l'Égalité des Chances en Afrique, asks: “How many of those leaders have used their position for personal gain? […] Power should never be a shortcut to riches. Instead of making companies in Africa, people become politicians.”

As a result of this corruption eating away at the heart of African institutions, he sees the continent’s growth as fragile. He highlights the collapse of African currencies when the commodity cycle recently turned, the rise of phenomena like Boko Haram, and West Africa’s unpreparedness for the 2013 Ebola outbreak.

That is not how Safaricom’s Collymore sees it. Rather, he sees a much stronger and more resilient economy underpinning Africa’s recent growth spurt. “The first thing you must remember is that the consumer and business spend on the continent today is about $4trn.” And thanks to the macroeconomic reforms that Kaberuka outlined, Collymore points to the roughly “400 companies that are generating more than $1bn in revenue, profitably, outperforming their global peers.”

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to African countries’ economic recovery, such as growing Asian wages. “We are beginning to see relocation of light manufacturing away from China. Ethiopia is beginning to attract shoe manufacturers. […] China is seeking a stable manufacturing space, and Africa presents that,” says Collymore. “So both in export and supply, Africa’s growing consumer economies are, I believe, what are driving developments on the continent and what are actually moving this away from being an illusion to reality.”

From left, Attijariwafa’s Douiri with a participant; The Africa Report’s editor-inchief Patrick Smith and the debaters; Songwe, IFC; delegates vote on the motion

Speakers at the fifth Africa Report Debate Introduction Mo Ibrahim Created the Mo Ibrahim Foundation

Debaters Vera Songwe Regional director for West and Central Africa, IFC Donald Kaberuka Former president, African Development Bank Mohamed Ould Bouamatou Mauritanian businessman, created the Fondation pour l’Égalité des Chances en Afrique Bob Collymore CEO Safaricom

Expert witnesses Pascal Lamy Former directorgeneral, World Trade Organisation Mohamed Ben Ouda CEO, SNTL Group Ann Grant Board member, Tullow Oil, former UK high commissioner to South Africa Ismail Douiri Co-CEO, Attijariwafabank Group Jon Marks Chair, Cross-border Information

But is there still a clear path to that kind of labour-intensive growth? Ann Grant, a former British high commissioner to South Africa, says technology is hurting jobs in certain businesses more than others: “The UK and the US have seen the largest net decline in jobs over the past 15 years, and new technologies impacted most on sectors with traditionally the large numbers of lowest-skilled jobs – in manufacturing and wholesale and retail.”

Grant adds: “Perhaps less wellknown is the impact on the professions and the middle class – which we’reallhopingwillgrowinAfrica– [...] with algorithms already doing much of the data capture, number crunching and analytical tasks currently performed by qualified accountants, lawyers, tax officials and so on.” The World Economic Forum’s 2016 report on the future ofemploymentpredictedthatmore than 50% of such jobs across the countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development will go within the next 20 years or sooner.

DEMOGRAPHIC CHALLENGE

So, is Africa fighting the last war and trying development models that may be obsolete? Not so, says former AfDB president Kaberuka, who recalls a UK prime minister appearing on television to decry the job-killing power of the microchip. Since then, it has provided thousands of jobs in Britain.

Former World Trade Organ­ isation boss Pascal Lamy argues

64 BUSINESS | COMPANIES & MARKETS

that from another of the great global challenges – the protectionism of US President Donald Trump – Africa has less to fear, partly because there is far more intra-African trade. “If Trump acts crazy, it won’t mean that all the others will act crazy – and the Europeans and Chinese won’t follow him,” says Lamy.

More difficult, says Lamy, is Africa’s demographic challenge.

“There are a billion people on the continent today. By 2050, that will double. To avoid this becoming a migratory wave impossible for Europe to manage, you need 4-5% growth in GDP per capita [per year] between 2020 and 2050.”

Kaberuka is more sanguine on migration, recalling how Australia went from preferring white immigrants to welcoming refugees to boost its population.

The Morocco case study (see TAR 89) was also hotly debated in

Marrakech. And the view from the ground at home and across Africa is of opportunity and growth, rather than alarm bells, says Mohamed Ben Ouda, the chief executive of Morocco’s SNTL, a logistics company. He has seen the strong push of Moroccan companies keen to conquer new markets south of the Sahara. “In 2015 and 2016, we grew 16%,” he says. “In my travels across the many markets we operate in, I meet with businesspeople, young people. There is a real drive to succeed.”

INCLUSIVE GROWTH?

Ouda argues that the Moroccan model of diversified growth, with industrial policy driving key sectors, is something the continent should look at. He disputes the idea that the Tangier health facility that Songwe mentioned is not part of a wider push for inclusive growth. “I’m from Tangier. There

$526 Chile’s GDP per capita in 1960; today it is $13,000

are lots of jobs which have come there. Renault has built a factory, and many more have joined.

There is a real dynamism in the manufacturing ecosystem that has managed to generate jobs. We have really woken up,” Ouda says.

He also salutes the growing resistance of local companies in the logistics sector in different African countries, even with international competition.“InSenegal,it’sSNTT. In Algeria, it’s La Flèche. In South Africa, it’s Super Group. And they are doing well because they are close to the market and because of a new cadre of management who have gone to Harvard, MIT, HEC, Oxford, Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. There is now a really strong level of education in lots of different African countries.”

Songwe insists Africa should focus on the fragile corporate base of the pyramid, small and medium-sized companies which

MO IBRAHIM FOUNDATION

Mo Ibrahim and the Emir of Kano share the vivacious atmosphere of the Governance Weekend

A weekend in Marrakech with Mo BARNSTORMING HEADLINE ACTS, from Hugh Masekela – whose rendition of ‘Stimela’ (The Coal Train) sent shivers through the audience – to Angélique Kidjo and Youssou N’Dour, make it easier to digest the tough messages and high-level discussions of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Governance Weekend, held this year in April in Marrakech, Morocco.

Delegates and panellists tackled three tough and interlocking challenges facing Africa: the first, violent extremism

and migration; the second, citizen participation and democracy; and the third, finding a way to drive inclusive growth on the continent. The overarching theme – Is Africa at a tipping point? – has as background the huge demographic challenges, as Africa goes from a billion to 2 billion in population between now and 2050.

This was a rumbustious collision of minds with friends old and new that generated interesting conversations.

It was also a milestone – the 10th anniversary of the foundation, which has been delivering annual reports on governance indicators in ever-greater detail each year.

In a peacock-blue robe, the emir of Kano and former Nigerian central bank governor Lamido Sanusi called for modern and accurate representations of Islam in Nigeria to displace false ideas and false applications of the religion.

And in true Mo Ibrahim Foundation style, there were bridges built to other platforms. This included the more traditional campaigning style of Bono, who presented the One Campaign for Africa’s latest push to brand poverty as sexist. But there was also an attempt to use the best practices of the private sector. Paul Polman, the chief executive of Unilever – a member along with Ibrahim of the new non-profit group, the B Team – shared insights on how businesses and other groups can work together. The B Team wants to see ambitious targets for the continent, be they in nutrition, energy or child welfare – and says businesses should be stepping up to the plate.

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may be able to use a mobile phone to send money, but often have no pension systems or insurance.

“These are the people who, if there is a fire, their life savings are gone and they are lost,” she says. “For these people, [development] is still an illusion.”

Safaricom’s Collymore disagrees: “Since we launched mobile money, we have moved a significant number of people into the financially included space. And when I say significant, I mean millions, tens of millions […].

Whereas 40% of Kenyans used to rely on emergency funding, we now have that 40% who are relying on savings that they can do through the mobile phone.”

THINKING AHEAD

Inclusive finance is certainly a key route towards prosperity, agrees Ismail Douiri, the co-chief executive of Attijariwafabank, a Moroccan financial institution that has successfully expanded across the continent. “We’ve put in place the right mandatory savings mechanisms very early on, so we have social security. Of course, it only applies for the formal sector, a minority employer, but still it’s pensions, savings that are gathered for the long term.”

AndMoroccohasnotbeenafraid to ignore advice from Washington DC. “We have had heavy investment in infrastructure, sometimes not necessarily immediately productive, so the World Bank keeps on saying: ‘Okay, it’s not returning what it should have’. But, nonetheless, we are now in the top 20 countries in terms of maritime connectivity. That is a huge asset that we now have,” says Douiri.

The Rabat government has also not been afraid to push for more ‘orthodox’ policies either, he says: “It’s not only tariffs; it’s really regulatoryframework.” Theresultisthat Morocco is bound up into global industrial supply chains. One can rightly say that, for those involved, development is not an illusion.

What about a in your country?

We would wou love to hear your contribution to the debate. Join in c ntrib at www.theafricareport.com THE AFRICA REPORT

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66 BUSINESS | LEADERS

Koh Poh Koon Stronger ties, biscuit by biscuit Singaporean agribusiness ventures and city planners are seeking opportunities on the continent, as African exporters target stronger trade niches

S

ingapore is tailoring its trade relationship to Africa’s emergence, pitching itself as a natural partner in areas ranging from technology to town planning and as a “springboard'” for the continent’s exports into other South East Asian markets, says the trade minister of the tiny sovereign city state.

“Fromitsownhistory,Singapore knows the challenges and pitfalls of the kind of fast development that many African economies are experiencing today,” Koh Poh Koon told The Africa Report in an interview on the sidelines of the second International Conference on the Emergence of Africa, held in Abidjan at the end of March.

From Côte d’Ivoire, he travelled with his 11-strong business deleg­ ation to Ghana to inaugurate a newly modernised biscuit factory outside Accra, for Singaporean multinational Olam. Commenting light-heartedly on the growth in consumer demand, Koh said: “The emerging middle classes do

FRANCIS KOKOROKO/@ACCRAPHOTO FOR TAR

Trade minister, Singapore

not just want biscuits. They want biscuits, manufactured in their own country, with cream inside.”

Certainly, the cookie has crumbled in Singapore’s favour as an investmentdestination.TheSoutheast Asian trading hub, with a population of just 5.5 million, is ranked by the World Bank as having the world’s most business-friendly regulatory environment and is listed as the third most competitive economy by the World Economic Forum. In a sign of the country’s growing attractiveness, Ethiopian Airlines has announced it will put a Dreamliner on the route from Addis Ababa to Singapore five times a week from June.

REGIONAL SPRINGBOARDS

“Singapore and Africa are in two separate parts of the world, so we are not in competition,” says Koh, who was a surgeon before he was elected to parliament two years ago. “Both Singaporean and African companies can play a part in being springboards into each other’s regions.”

DOCTOR TO DEAL-MAKER 1996 Graduated in medicine from the National University of Singapore 2012 Partnered Fortis Healthcare to set up the Fortis Colorectal Hospital 11 September 2015 Elected MP for Ang Mo Kio 1 January 2016 Appointed minister of trade, industry and national development

Koh says the Association of South-East Asian Nations bloc offers 600 million potential consumers, increasing at a rate of about 5% per year: “African products, especially agricultural ones such as cocoa and cashew nuts, are in increasing demand by the growing middle class in Asia.”

He wants partner governments in Africa to sign double-taxation avoidance treaties and free trade agreements to boost commerce.

Olam – with a presence in 18 African countries – was for a long time Singapore’s standard-bearer on the continent. It remains a leader, providing thousands of jobs through a diversity of operations includingcoffeeandcottonplantations in Zambia, five joint ventures with the government of Gabon and packaged food products in Nigeria.

It has a track record of investing where others fear to tread, such as in the Zimbabwean cotton sector, which it entered at the height of the farming crisis in 2005.

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BEYOND COMMONWEALTH

Koh says Singapore’s current top African trading partners are South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria and Rwanda. “We are a former Commonwealth country, so the English language has played a role. But increasingly, thanks to education, that is changing. We are in Ivory Coast and Senegal, for example,” he says.

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One of the most compelling aspects of Singapore’s pitch as a partner is its own transformation since independence in 1965, says Koh: “One of our strengths is master planning. Our capabilities in these fields were born out of necessity. Singapore is a very small land mass of 719km².”

After working on Kigali, Surbana Jurong has been commissioned

by Ghana’s government to do a master plan for more than 50% of the surface of northern Ghana.

ARID AREA SOLUTIONS

In Tanzania, water technology company Hyflux has started work on Star City in Morogoro, a 33km2 development that will include an industrial/logistics park, housing and a university. Koh says companies like Hyflux – which is already well established in Algeria – have a wealth of experience to apply to arid areas: “In Singapore, we do not have enough water so we have leveraged science and technology to develop membrane technology and reverse osmosis to help us recycle water. We can apply our experience and technology, as towns grow and develop in areas of Africa that are water-scarce.”

Koh says one of the biggest challenges to Singapore’s expansion in Africa is the regulatory

“Our capabilities were born out of necessity. Singapore is a very small land mass” environment. “Governments need to give companies as much certainty as possible. As the desire to invest grows, companies will want to put more money into fixed, more permanent infrastructure.

Investment treaties that guarantee mechanisms for dispute resolution and insure companies against expropriation will give them confidence to come into emerging markets in Africa.’’

Koh says he is not aware of any Singaporean investors hitting major obstacles yet. “Businesses canmakethingshappenwhenthey reallywantto,butourgovernments have to be there to help.’’

Alex Duval Smith in Abidjan

Anthony Okpanachi Appointed managing director and chief executive of the new Development Bank of Nigeria, Okpanachi has a chance to implement President Buhari’s industrial policy vision. A key priority is to lend to the commercial banking sector for on-lending to small and medium-sized companies.

Mmamoloko Kubayi After President Jacob Zuma’s night of the long knives, Kubayi was propelled to the position of South Africa’s minister of energy. She inherits a polemic over nuclear power, judged too expensive by some, but promoted by others close to Zuma.

Jasper Westerink After his posting running the Indonesian personal health segment for the Dutch technology group, Westerink now moves to Johannesburg to be Philips Africa CEO. He wants to strengthen the company’s health focus in Africa.

OLA AKINNOLA; PROPERTY OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA; ALL RIGHTS RESERVERD

biscuit plant in Tema, jointly owned by Olam (75%) and Japan’s Sanyo Foods, signals what he describes as the Singaporean agro giant’s “bullish prospects as it moves up the value chain, bringing in state-of-the-art equipment and creating jobs’’.

Wilmar and Tolaram are other Singaporean household names with a broad presence across the continent. And offshore Africa’s oil and gas reserves have for many years transited through many Singapore-built platforms.

In 2016, Singapore’s bilateral trade with Africa was worth $6bn.

Sovereign wealth funds Temasek and GIC are stepping up their involvement in African projects, signalling growing confidence.

The growth also signals diversification. Frasers Hospitality has announcedplanstooperateluxury serviced apartments in Brazzaville and Abuja. Archicom, a manufacturer of building panels, has launched a collaboration with an Ivorian building supplies firm.

Singapore’s African overtures date back to 1992, when its foreign ministry created a knowledge-sharing programme.

Since then, some 8,900 civil servants from a dozen African countries have been invited to Singapore on fortnight-long ‘busman’s holidays’ in sectors ranging from civil aviation to education.

Singapore has trade offices in Accra and Johannesburg. Nairobi will be added by the end of the year. Among other companies making inroads into Africa, Koh cites Crimson Logic’s online electronic trade platform, which operates in Kenya as TradeNet. Ascent Solutions is looking for partners for its tracking technology for shipping containers.

Hands-on at iHub’s robotics bootcamp

JTMATHAI/IHUB

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START-UPS

Getting owned

For all the goodwill generated by star start-ups like M-Pesa and M-Kopa, Kenyan innovators are still selling out to foreign money too early. Major players in the tech scene are trying to change this

W

hen Joel Macharia founded Abacus, a start-up that builds trading software for investors in Nairobi’s stock exchange, he struggled to access the seed capital he needed to grow his business. “It’s actually been a pretty rough couple of years,” Macharia tells The Africa Report.

“I cut off a few deals […] as we built this platform. I was funding it by writing business articles for magazines – that’s what I was using to pay the developers.”

Abacus, which targets Kenyans in the diaspora who are interested in investing on the Nairobi Securities Exchange, now has about 7,000 users. Most of the company’s seed capital was bootstrapped, meaning funds needed to get off the ground are sourced from the founders’ friends and family. But Macharia finally got the capital to take his business to the next level.

He says he has raised about $100,000 selling equity in his business over the past two years.

As the world celebrates the tenth anniversary of Kenya's

M-Pesa, which is among the world’s most successful financial technology innovations to date, the country’s next generation of tech entrepreneurs are facing difficulties in finding a path to success. Safaricom, the company that introduced M-Pesa, is 40% foreign owned through Vodafone’s shareholding. And equity in the country’s young companies is often sold off to foreign companies to get projects off the ground.

CATCH UP, KENYA!

“A lot of Kenya’s more prominent start-ups, or more prominent companies at least in technology, tend to be foreign owned,” Josiah Mugambi, executive director of Nairobi’s tech incubator iHub, tells The Africa Report. “When you look at the likes of M-Kopa [a solar power start-up] there’s that scenario playing out."

Investment in the start-up technology sectors of Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa accounted for 80% of such funding on the continent last year, according to annual rankings from Disrupt

40% Percent of foreignowned shares in Safaricom, the company that introduced M-PESA SOURCE: SAFARICOM

Africa, a research outfit. But stark differences are emerging between the ownership retained by local investors across the three countries. Compared to their peers in other African countries, Kenya’s tech entrepreneurs are lagging behind in terms of ownership.

“As someone who’s also in the start-up scene and fundraising constantly, I have seen that a lot of the people who are entering the market are not African, especially in Kenya,” says Chika Uwazie, chief executive officer of TalentBase Nigeria, which provides payroll services. “For example in Nigeria, you’ll see more Nigerians that own the start-up technology – like Paystack, Flutterwave.”

Ma y a H o r g a n Fa m o d u , founder of Nigeria-based tech financing company Ingressive, says: “You could say Kenya [is the leading country for African technology success] if you were talking about M-Pesa and companies like that, but are they really African businesses?”

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COMPANIES & MARKETS | BUSINESS 69

capital they need to advance to higher levels of the funding ecosystem – points where private equity and venture capital firms might be interested. Kenya’s private-equity sector is not very active, especially compared to other countries with thriving tech scenes. In the University of Navarra, Spain’s annual venture capital and private-equity country attractiveness ranking for last year, South Africa ranked 32nd, well ahead of Nigeria at 87th and Kenya at 92nd.

“There is lack of money. There is a lack of African private equity firms. There is a lack of huge corporates willing to invest or having the money to invest.

And that’s a real problem,” says Abdou Diop, a partner at Mazars Morocco. “And the government is not always helping, too.”

These companies are also hit by a gap in the country’s financing systems, which tend to favour higher-value tech companies.

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and venture capital financing, according to iHub executive director Mugambi. “Anything less is probably not quite high enough for the big players. I think most of them do $2m upwards.

A lot of the money that people at iHub need is probably one tenth of that.”

In January, iHub launched a $40m innovation fund that aims to fill this gap. The fund will start with $10m to invest in Kenya before raising more to build young companies in East Africa. While the fund is not to be owned by iHub, it will be “an exclusive investment partner to the iHub” and it will be mandated to “engage, support and promote the best entrepreneurs across Africa,” Mugambi says.

LONG-TERM VIEW

iHub’s new fund aims to inject long-term capital into the funding ecosystem. “A lot of the local investors in the past have been taking a point of view where if they are making an investment they will not necessarily want to stay long term. They are looking

iHub, a Nairobi technology incubator, is addressing the financing gap for lower-value start-ups with its own $40m innovation fund

to make a return on investment in two years,” says Mugambi.

But others say a lack of capital is not the biggest problem facing start-ups. “If start-ups show good growth and we see that they execute, we can invest ourselves and bring in co-investors,” says Kenza Lahlou, managing partner at Outlierz, a Morocco-based seed investment firm. “So it’s not only about finding the money because, maybe it’s counterintuitive, but money is available. It’s just that the investors are too afraid to invest in start-ups because it’s something that they don’t know.”

Kenya’s technology ecosystem has suffered from a lack of business advice for early-stage companies. For many start-ups, the biggest stumbling block is simply not knowing the right people or how to get connected to the right people.

“A start-up needs skills. They need business acumen. They need to know how to write a business plan,” says Eleni Gabre-Madhin, the founder of Ethiopia’s commodities exchange. She is launching an

70 BUSINESS | COMPANIES & MARKETS

Not many people provide seed funds and help start-ups to access the market.”

One idea to improve Kenya’s start-up ecosystem is to construct a purpose-built tech city. Konza Tech City, under construction about two hours south of Nairobi’s city centre and dubbed ‘Silicon Savannah’, is Ndemo’s brainchild. He says the city, which will comprise a South Korean and a German university, a dedicated research facility and office space, will encourage “cross-pollination” of students, entrepreneurs and government officials.

Funding for start-ups in Africa’s top three tech markets ($m) 2015

54.6 46.8

49.4

46.5

2016

47.3

10.5 Nigeria

guess if you’re going to be making contributions to a society or to a community then you need capacity to be able to do so.”

Kenya’s cabinet secretary for information and communication technology from 2005 to 2013, Bitange Ndemo, says the government must do more to help start-ups get off the ground. “The government must underwrite the period of incubation or the period of acceleration,” he says.

“They must provide seed capital.

Kenya

OTHERS’ MISTAKES

Architects’ drawings of Konza City project a sleek environment for start-ups to boost their ecosystem

KOTDA

South Africa

KOTDA

SOURCE: DISRUPT AFRICA

agribusiness-focused incubator in Addis Ababa called blueMoon.

“But at least as important as that, they also need connections to power, to people that will make a phone call, to people that will connect them to a high-net-worth angel investor. They need people willing to give them a deferred payment plan for legal services, financial services or web design.”

Kenya’s tech entrepreneurs want to be spending their time honing their business strategies and bettering their digital products. The opportunity cost of the disfunction of the current environment is difficult to calculate.

“In the start-up community, everybody is so caught up fighting these battles and it’s an extremely difficult space to be playing in when you’re dealing with regulators and a lack of finance. You’re dealing with all these kinds of problems and that community itself tends not to grow as a community,” says Macharia of Abacus. “Because I

“In an ecosystem you can’t have pieces scattered all over the place,” says Ndemo. “When you are in a conducive environment [it’s like]: ‘I am the one who is manufacturing a product, there are people who are looking to invest in that product and they are the people [I am] working with.’

There are people who have failed who can tell you ‘avoid this’ and stuff. There are so many things you benefit from in an ecosystem.”

Since Ndemo left office in 2013, the government agencies building Konza have struggled to stay on schedule and to convince investors that power and water supply will be adequate for the city, which is projected to cost $14.5bn to build. “I’m praying that they get back on track,” Ndemo says.

But Kenyan tech entrepreneurs are sceptical that Konza will bring any real benefits. “The requirement for a physical location or a physical place for you to be able to access these benefits – and you’re not in manufacturing – doesn’t quite make sense to me,” says Macharia of Abacus. “It’s not an industry that’s based in physical manufacturing, so it’s very difficult to say as a software developer you need to be in Konza for you to get these tax breaks. You can develop software anywhere.”

Mark Anderson in Nairobi Additional reporting by Nicholas Norbrook in Marrakech

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72 BUSINESS | FINANCE

Edward Ndichu

Head of digital financial services and mobile payments, KCB Group

Mobile money has been a lot more successful than mobile banking, says the fintech chief at Kenya’s KCB Group, who is looking to partner with tech giants in the US and Asia to offer more services

K

enya Commercial Bank (KCB) wants to be a leader in the continent’s burgeoning financial technology (fintech) industry. Being next to an innovation hub in Nairobi certainly helps. Having strong links to Asia’s biggest economy – China – does not hurt either.

Thanks to the success of M-Pesa, the popular mobilemoney service offered by telecoms operator Safaricom that is now used by more than 25 million people, Kenya is a testing ground for the mobile-payment revolution. This is something KCB, as East Africa’s largest bank by assets, is capitalising on.

KCB partnered with Safaricom in 2015 to launch KCB M-Pesa, a mobile-based bank account. The service now boasts more than 15 million customers, according to Edward Ndichu, KCB Group’s head of digital financial services and mobile payments.

The bank’s new mobile lending models have also been a success.

Ndichu tells The Africa Report: “We used to take customers through very arduous processes to be able to make an application for a loan and to be able to access

MOSMWANIKI

We need to focus on the customer experience the loan; so much so that the limits for a loan were pretty high because the cost of processing a loan didn’t justify the lower limits.” He adds: “But now, using new sources of data to determine credit risk has allowed the bank to issue more loans.” In late 2016, KCB said it had issued nearly $100m of loans and was handling an average of 30,000 loan requests from mobile phones every day.

SMARTPHONE APPEAL

The mobile-banking sector is still in its early stage of development, Ndichu says: “Mobile money makes more sense for consumers than mobile banking. Today, we have a 30-40% penetration of mobile banking with consumers.

As banks, we’ve not done a very

“Using new sources of data to assess credit risk has allowed the bank to issue more loans” good job in getting customers to use mobile phones to access their accounts.” One reason offered for this lacklustre performance is that the banking experience currently on offer is not grabbing the consumer.

“It’s not really about giving them a bank account – it’s about giving them an experience,” Ndichu says, noting the growing role of smartphones in the banking world.

Ndichu points to Apple Pay and Google Wallet as exciting services that resonate with customers. “If you focus on giving the customer

the experience and not just simply a bank account, then you realise the massive opportunity that you have today.”

KCB is in preliminary talks with US tech giants Facebook, Apple and Google about offering new services in East Africa. “In terms of specific products, we’ve not gotten into that conversation.

But of course there’s the Android platform that we’re considering, there’s the Apple Pay platform that we’re having conversations with.” The bank is due to launch these new services within the next two years.

One of the challenges the bank is facing is scaling up its mobile-banking services to reach more people. “We are increasingly going to work with more global partners,” Ndichu says.

The Chinese market is of particular interest to KCB. Kenya imported $2.1bn worth of goods from China in 2013, according to the World Bank. Successful Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, which posted $435bn in gross merchandise volume last year, is an interesting example for KCB, says Ndichu.

“We’re looking significantly at East Asia, with the success we’ve seenwithWeChatandAlibaba.Can we connect East Asia with Africa using fintech?” Ndichu asks. “For an African today to pay a Chinese person, or a Chinese person to pay an African, it’s a very painful process, and we’re asking ourselves, can we make this better?”

Interview by Mark Anderson

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Is it game over for the CFA franc?

Central African leaders weigh up their options as oil prices continue to pressurise the currency

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he oil-bust doldrums in the economies of Equatorial Guinea, Chad and Gabon have leaders calling into question the future of the CFA franc, which ties African economies to the French treasury. The French government and the West and Central African countries that use the currency met in Abidjan in early April to discuss the current challenges for the CFA franc.

Since the CFA trades at a fixed rate – 656 – to the euro and African governments that use the currency must keep half of their foreign exchange reserves – about €10bn ($10.8bn) in 2016 – in the French treasury, oil exportersareconstrainedinhowthey react to downturns in the market. A devaluation would bring short-term pain, but help to reduce trade deficits and sovereign debt burdens.

International Monetary Fund spokesman Gerry Rice says that “quick, united and decisive actions” are needed to prevent a devaluation of the CFA franc and that, so far, governments have been slow to act. In February, the IMF announced that Gabon is in talks with the institution about a financial aid package.

Some political leaders and civil society activists are calling for a more radical solution. Chad’s President Idriss Déby is leading the charge to abandon the CFA franc and create a truly African currency that is not tied to Europe. On independence day celebrations, 11 August 2016, Déby said: “It is necessary now, in fact, for this currency to belong to us.” At the April summit, France’s finance minister Michel Sapin said hisgovernmenthasnoopiniononthe future of the currency, as that will be decided by African governments.

Honoré Banda

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Not always neat in DC The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) kicked off their annual spring meetings in that neatly polished city of Washington DC on 21 April. Sadly, it has not gone quite as neatly as the Bretton Woods crowd may have liked. Given the preference of the current Trump administration for protectionism, and the (current) free trade instincts of the IMF and WB, it was never going to be plain sailing. And given that the last period in history where there was no leading global backer for free trade (1920-1945) saw a depression, a world war and a genocide, the stakes are somewhat elevated.

Messy cake questions IMF boss Christine Lagarde has warned against the Trump administration’s attempts to push ‘Buy American’ and cut trade deficits by clamping down on imports – much as the institution she runs hollers at African and other countries trying to do the same thing. Trump has railed against Canadian dairy import restrictions, which reminds Hannibal of the fact that rich countries are all massive hypocrites when it comes to the tricky question of both wanting the cake of protected domestic markets and eating the benefits of free access to the markets of others.

Multilateral misery Meanwhile, in news more directly relevant to the continent, the Trump government appears hostile to any capital increase for the WB, which could affect loans to Africa. Trump’s proposed budget carried deep cuts to foreign aid and other international bodies, such as the United Nations. The White House talked about cutting $650m from its funding for the WB and IMF over three years. Yet Africa needs the money, says WB president Jim Yong Kim, because of rising interest rates in the US, which could mop up some global liquidity that might otherwise go to Africa. “We will make the case,” Jim told reporters. “At the end of the day it’s the board that decides.” A board where the US holds a 16% voting share.

Big Bond for Africa In a bid to raise cash, Nigeria’s former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, herself a former number two at the WB, has launched the idea of a ‘Big Bond for Africa’ to meet financing shortfalls. Writing with Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global Development, Okonjo-Iweala points to the fact that things are slowing down fast for Africa: “The estimated growth rate for 2016 is lower than the population growth rate of about 2%, implying a per capita contraction in gross domestic product.” The solution proposed is a huge increase in infrastructure investment in Africa. Funnily enough, that is exactly what Trump’s senior adviser Steve Bannon is preaching… for the US.

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DOSSIER POWER ETHIOPIA

Regional

Ethiopia is looking to sell electricity to fund its own ambitious infrastructure projects. Fortunately, its neighbours are queuing up to buy its megawatts

By Mark Anderson and Nicholas Norbrook

O

n a rainy afternoon in Addis Ababa’s old Italian district, a flash and a loud bang from the top of an electricity pylon sends pedestrians running in all directions. “Lousy Indian-made transformers,” mutters one passerby, who, like many people, argues that Ethiopia has not got the best value for money from its municipal power contractors.

For decades, Ethiopia has suffered from chronic power

shortages. In 1953, the Aba Samuel hydroelectric dam was the only power source in the country, generating just 6MW. That number has slowly risen to 2,300MW today, which is still far short of the amount of electricity Ethiopia needs to provide power for its 95 million people. By comparison, South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised economy, produces more than 250,000MW. Ethiopia’s government has long touted the potential of its power sector to facilitate economic

75

powerhouse 80% Increase in Ethiopia’s electricity production capacity from the Gibe III dam SOURCE: SALINI IMPREGILO

The country’s ambitious plan to become a middle-income country by 2025, which is estimated to cost $200bn in investment, relies heavily on developing electricity production. The government aims to establish grid links as far north as Europe and as far south as South Africa. “From Ethiopia we [will] try to go to Kenya and through Kenya to go to Tanzania and further to South Africa. And in the north […] we are already connected with Sudan and from Sudan to Egypt and further to Europe,” says Azeb.

The government plans to use the moneyearned from powerexports to fund other projects.

While exporting electricity as far as Europe and South Africa might not be realistic, Harry Verhoeven, professor of government at Georgetown University, says Ethiopia’s electricity development is “probably one of the more successful government programmes, at least from a technical execution point of view.”

Ethiopia is aiming to boost its electricity production

The pharaonic Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has Egyptian tempers flaring

PETTERIK WIGGERS/PANOS-REA

growth. It estimates a projected capacity of 60,000MW from hydroelectric, wind, solar and geothermal sources combined.

“Ethiopia has very big potential in energy sources,” says Azeb Asnake, chief executive officer of Ethiopian Electric Power, the state-run power utility. “The biggest [is] hydropower. We have 12 river basins in Ethiopia, nine of which are actually now under development,” she says, also noting the strong potential of solar and geothermal production.

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WHO WILL BUY?

Regional exports are key to Ethiopia’s electricity expansion strategy. “The top customers will definitely be Sudan and Kenya, because of very simple topographical reasons and how cheap it is to import electricity for them, but also because politically they are

Ethiopia’s planned power exports

EGYPT

500MW

SUDAN

100MW**

DJIBOUTI

200MW RWANDA

100MW*

KENYA

400MW

TANZANIA

400MW

* Already exporting in 2016 ** With a planned further increase to 1,600MW

the ones most closely aligned with Addis Ababa,” says Verhoeven.

The Gibe dams in the south of the country are well positioned to send electricity to Ethiopia’s southern neighbours. Kenya and Tanzania have both signed agreementstoimport400MW,and Kenya is likely to become one of Ethiopia’s largest power importers.

“Given that Kenya is limited in its own options for power generation, the 400MW is likely to double, if not more,” says Verhoeven.

The Ethiopian government hopes that GERD’s location – less than 15km from the border with Sudan – will entice Khartoum into buying significantly more power than the 100MW it currently imports. Sudan is struggling to provide power to its population, less than than half of whom have access to electricity. The country has aimed to increase its thermal

SOURCE: WORLD BANK, EASTERN AFRICA POWER POOL

almost sixfold, reaching 12,000MW,by2020.Hydropoweris expectedtomakeupthebulkofthis new power generation. “Currently, we have about 4,300MW already developed,” Azeb says.

Several notable successes have been rolled out in the country in recent months, including the launch of Gibe III hydroelectric dam, which was built at a cost of $1.6bn and has a capacity of 1,879MW. According to Salini Impregilo, the Italian construction company that built the dam, Gibe III will generate up to 6,500GWh of electricity per year, increasing Ethiopia’s production capacity by at least 80%.

Another key hydropower project is the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which is due to be completed later this year. The brainchild of former prime minister Meles Zenawi, the dam drew ire from environmental activists and the Egyptian government over its projected impact on the Nile River.

Once complete, the GERD will become Africa’s biggest hydropower dam and the seventh-largest in the world. It will have a capacity to produce 6,450MW per year.

power production from 900MW in 2015 to 4,555MW by 2021.

Djibouti currently imports an estimated 60MW of electricity from Ethiopia. That amount is set to rise when a new transmission line becomes operational. But Djibouti’s ambitious $14bn infrastructure development strategy, which includes building new ports, airports and telecommunications towers, could create competition for Addis Ababa.

“We are building energy infrastructure. We’re investing a lot in renewable energy – wind, solar – to really serve East Africa,” Aboubaker Omar Hadi, chairman of Djibouti Ports and Free Zone Authority, tells The Africa Report.

OUTRUNNING POLITICS

6,450MW Annual production capacity of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam SOURCE: GOVERNMENT OF ETHIOPIA

Ethiopia’s ambitions to export power as far away as Europe and South Africa are far-fetched, according to Verhoeven. “Let Ethiopia play its role in its own region and for its own development rather than starting to dream of Ethiopian electricity keeping the lights on in Rome.”

But, “as always in the Horn of Africa, politics is the Achilles heel,” says Verhoeven. “If you’ve been studying this region, then you know how quickly and how dramatically things can change.

What looked like an absolute certainty yesterday will not be one tomorrow. […] The Ethiopian government knows that and that’s another reason why it’s trying to push ahead as fast as it can with some of these designs.”

By 2020, BioTherm Energy intends to invest US$330 million in sustainable energy projects in Africa. This pipeline of projects is expected to provide secure access to electricity to 1 million households and businesses. The company operates one wind (27MW) and two solar projects (22MW) in South Africa and was also awarded: • 5 solar and wind projects in South Africa (343MW) • 2 solar projects in Burkina Faso (34MW) • 1 solar project in Ghana (20MW) Our three projects in West Africa recently secured just under US$ 2 million in grant funding from the US Government (USTDA) to complete the final technical studies.

Meanwhile, BioTherm Energy is also actively developing other wind and solar projects across the continent and is excited about the opportunities for renewables in Africa.

Further information, please contact Jasandra Nyker, Chief Executive Officer, jnyker@biothermenergy.com Tel.:+27 (0) 11 367 4600 www.biothermenergy.com

POWER | DOSSIER 77

Abdulazeez Abdullahi

Head of corporate communication, Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Regulatory inconsistencies have not helped operators Electricity distribution companies continue to hit problems after the 2013 privatisation of some of Nigeria’s electricity assets

TAR: The government say that distribution companies (discos) are at fault because they lack technical capacity and because of what it calls ‘sharp practices’.

Is that fair?

Abdulazeez Abdullahi: No doubt regulatory inconsistencies have not helped operators in the Nigerian electrical supply industry, including Kaduna disco. This has severely affected our ability to access finance and make the necessary investment required to achieve 100% of our performance obligations in terms of metering and network expansion and customer services. Despite this, over the past six months Kaduna disco has embarked on a massive meter roll-out in our franchise areas, starting with Kaduna, Kebbi and Sokoto states, geared towards improving our operational efficiency and service delivery. We have also investedindistributionnetworkinfrastructure – transformers, cables, conductors, breakers, insulators, etc. – working towards improved network reliability. Kaduna disco has also procured the services of Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDDL) as technical partners towards achieving our loss-reduction commitment.

How will you stop the losses that discos face?

As you may be aware, private investors of Kaduna disco took THE AFRICA REPORT

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over operations in December 2014, more than a year after all other discos had been taken over.

Upon takeover, discos were required to undertake a loss study by an independent consultant to ascertain the actual loss level of the company. This was done in 2015.

And at the end of the exercise, a loss level of 65.4% was established.

Naturally, with the 2016 increase in tariff comes an initial hike in loss levels before it is contained.

Since February 2016, the monthly loss level of the company has been fluctuating between 64% and 70%.

Kaduna disco has invested in various activities to accelerate the reduction of the losses. It is acquir-

“Over the past six months Kaduna disco has embarked on a massive meter roll-out” ing and deploying smart-metering systems. All maximum-demand customers have been metered.

All 11kV and 33kV feeders have been fully geospatially mapped using GIS [geographic information systems]. The company is investing heavily in customer engagement systems to disabuse the negative notion from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria era.

[It] also invests in automating a lot of internal systems including communications and customer information systems.

A 2016 National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) report ranked Kaduna disco the lowest on metering progress.

What is your response?

Kaduna Electric has written to the NERC about its recent ranking of discos because we believe some of the indices are wrongly applied.

Wetookoveroperationsmorethan a year after others and we are being assessed using the same baseline.

Kaduna Electric is currently running a geospatial customer enumeration exercise, mapping out service power lines from the transformer to the customer premises. All the relevant customer information will be taken, including the customer tariff classification.

The project is the second phase of the Kaduna Electric Geographic Information System. Previously, withthesupportoftheWorldBank, all 33kV, 11kV power lines, ring main units and transformers have been mapped from the transmission substation to the distribution substation to the local transformer.

On metering, some of the major barriers to full customer metering have to do with the cost of metering allowed in the tariff, especially the capex.

While Kaduna disco, for example, requires about N9bn ($29.5m) to meet is metering obligations this year, the tariffs only make allowances for about N4.3bn.

Interview by Charles Idem in Lagos

F ERN AND ES

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INDEPENDENT POWER PROJECTS

Privately backed power projects – be they thermal, geothermal or solar – are on the rise as governments struggle to raise the financing to build new power plants

S

upplying electricity to homes and businesses is a major problem facing governments across Africa. According to the World Bank, the 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa combined generate almost the same amount of electricity as Spain – whose population, compared to sub-Saharan Africa’s 800 million people, is a mere 45 million. Fixing the problemdoesnotcomecheap.Whereas current investment is estimated at less than $5bn a year, sub-Saharan Africa will need more than $40bn annually to meet the increasing demand for energy.

“Traditional approaches to extending the grid are no longer viable as the main option for African countries,” Kofi Annan, chair of the Africa Progress Panel, told media. “They will take too long and will not meet the needs of our growing economies and societies. Instead, governments and their partners need to seize the opportunity to reimagine their energy futures.”

That will mean more flexibility – from decentralised grids to green energy, to new financing models.

To help reduce costs, governments and state utilities are opening their doors to private-sector participation in the form of independent power projects (IPPs).

Since sub-Saharan Africa’s first IPP in Côte d’Ivoire in 1994, followed by those in Kenya and Mauritius in 1996 and 1997 respectively, privately funded projects in the power sector have been on the rise. There were a total of 126 IPPs in 17 countries across sub-Saharan Africa as of December 2014, with an overall installed capacity of

11GW and investments worth $25.6bn, according to data from the World Bank.

With new oil and gas finds in countries such as Tanzania, Ghana and Uganda, not to mention the abundance of coal in Southern Africa, it makes sense for countries to use available natural resources to scale-up power generation capacity, despite the threat of high carbon emissions – which many in Africa say the rich world should pay for offsetting. Nevertheless, countries are increasingly looking to greener solutions to diversify their energy supplies.

OVERCOMING CHALLENGES

From Kenya’s Lake Turkana wind farm to a proposed geothermal plant in Ethiopia, to the projects under the South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) launched in 2011, a series of new privately financed projects using renewable technologies are taking off.

IPPs are mainly contracted on a build, operate and transfer (BOT) basis using a power purchase agreement (PPA), whereby the producer sells energy to a power purchaser, typically a utility, for an agreed period of time.

Governments such as Nigeria’s are working closely with producers to help overcome recurrent challenges linked to non-payment and to ensure the smooth running of projects.

Here we take a look at six major IPPs of at least 300MW that can lay claim to a number of firsts in each country.

Oheneba Ama Nti Osei

J AC

Q UE S

Can’t just wait for the government Morocco

The 1,386MW Safi power project at Ouled Salman is expected to be completed in the first half of 2018. The coal-fired project is the first in Africa to use ultra-supercritical technology, characterised by a significant reduction of carbon emissions.

Construction was launched in April 2013 and will cost an estimated $2.6bn.

The project is being developed and run by a joint venture, Safi Energy Company (Safiec), made up of GDF Suez Energy International (UK/France) and Morocco’s Nareva Holding – each with a 35% stake – and Japanese firm Mitsui and Co. The power will be bought at a fixed price

by Morocco’s Office National de ’Electricité et de l’Eau Potable for a 30-year period.

As the largest importer of energy in North Africa, the kingdom has been focused on developing its energy market.

The government has set a target of 2020 to generate 2,000MW of solar capacity across five power stations. With Safi, will come further energy infrastructure – the new Safi port and a coal-shipping terminal.

South Africa The world’s fifth-largest coal producer, South Africa continues to be heavily reliant on coal for power. The country’s Coal Baseload IPP Procurement Programme aims to generate 2,500MW by 2021 through privately funded projects. As part of this programme, the winning private bidders for the two first stations – Khanyisa and Thabametsi – were announced in October 2016. With a combined production of 863MW of electricity and an estimated cost of $2.9bn, the plants, in Mpumalanga and Limpopo respectively, are expected to begin operating in late 2020 and early 2021. The consortium building the 306MW Khanyisa plant will be led by Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power while South Africa’s Exxaro Resources will be in charge of the 557MW Thabametsi plant. Local investors include the Public Investment Corporation, the Development Bank of Southern Africa and the Industrial Development Corporation.

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POWER | DOSSIER 79

Nigeria

Ethiopia

More than 12 million residents stand to benefit when Nigeria’s first fully privately financed project, the 450MW Azura-Edo plant, begins operations in mid-2018. Lagos-based Azura Power West Africa will build, operate and maintain the plant, which will draw from the country’s reserves of natural gas.

The project benefits from a 20-year PPA and a put and call option agreement, under which the government undertakes to purchase the plant in the case of unforeseen developments. Construction work began in January 2016 on the first phase of what will ultimately be a 1,500MW power plant. Financial partners for the $813m project include Mauritius-based Amaya Capital, Standard Chartered Bank, Siemens Bank and Rand Merchant Bank. It is also the first Nigerian power project to receive a World Bank partial-risk guarantee.

Like neighbouring Kenya, Ethiopia is harnessing its potential for geothermal energy. The ambitious 1,000MW Corbetti project is Ethiopia’s first ever IPP. The project is part of the country’s second Growth and Transformation Plan aimed at increasing Ethiopia’s generation capacity from 4,200MW to 17,300MW by 2020.

Slated to be the largest geothermal facility in Africa, the plant will be built in two 500MW stages at an estimated cost of $4bn. In July 2015, the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation and the Corbetti Geothermal Company signed a 25-year PPA for the first phase of the project, which is estimated to take 8-10 years to reach commercial operation. As part of the US Power Africa initiative launched with six partner countries in 2013, the multi-phase project will be developed and operated

by US-Icelandic firm Reykjavík Geothermal with other stakeholders including the African Renewable Energy Fund and Iceland Drilling. The Corbetti project has been awarded a grant from the Geothermal Risk Mitigation Facility, a fund established by the AU, the German government and the EU-Africa Infrastructure Trust Fund to help accelerate geothermal development in East Africa.

Afam

540

630

Côte d’Ivoire Ghana

Azito

430

Okpai

Aba Integrated

462 480

460 141

Nigeria

434

Uganda

Kpone IPP

860 250

Takoradi II

440 330

SO

U

WO

RL

DB

AN

861

Bujagali Hydro Project

350

E:

Lake Turkana Wind Power

300

900

RC

Kenya

Investment (US$, millions) Capacity (MW)

K

Kenya

KIMA M

O KABII

Already home to the Olkaria geothermal IPP plant, the continent’s largest, Kenya will add the KSh70bn ($677.6m) Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) project to its list of green-energy success stories when it is completed in June 2017. The project – the largest private investment in the country’s history – will produce 310MW for the national grid, about 18% of the country’s installed generating capacity.

Kenya Power & Lighting Company (KPLC) and the LTWP consortium – comprising KP&P Africa and London-based Aldwych International working as the main co-developers – signed a PPA in 2010, under which the electricity produced will be sold to KPLC for 20 years. Made up of 365 wind turbines, the 40,000-acre wind farm will produce enough electricity for 1m homes and increase the country’s wind capacity from 14MW to 324MW.

Ghana Ghana’s largest IPP, the $900m Kpone plant, is expected to be commissioned by the end of 2017 (see page 50). Located in the Tema industrial area close to Accra, the plant is expected to produce enough electricity to power 1m households. The project prides itself in being largely African, with 67% of equity held by African entities and 83% of senior debt issued by African lenders. The thermal power plant will add 350MW of capacity and is being developed

by Ghanaian company Cenpower, which has signed a 20-year PPA with state-owned utility Electricity Company of Ghana. Ghana is in the process of commercialising its gas, and the Kpone facility, which can run on both crude oil and natural gas, will be able to receive cheap piped natural gas in the next two or three years.

C

(excluding South Africa),1994-2014

CEN PO W ER/AF

Largest IPPs in Sub-Saharan Africa

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ecobank.com

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82

Language

Kiswahili: friend or foe?

For some it’s the utopian language of the pan-African movement; for others it carries the stigma of brutality and slavery. Can this semantic marriage of Bantu and Arabic make East Africa stronger, or will it contribute to its fragmentation?

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ILLUSTRATION BY SÉVERIN MILLET FOR TAR

83

By Joseph Burite in Kampala

K

heri Mbiro, a 34-year-old Tanzanian lawyer, can barely form a sentence in his mother tongue, Ndendeule.

Like many Tanzanians of the generation born after the country’s independence in 1963, Mbiro was raised speaking Kiswahili, an official language of the East African nation that the government promoted to unite its more than 100 ethnic groups. But on social media platforms, in place of his name, Mbiro identifies as ‘Mndendeule’: a member of the Ndendeule cultivator farming group that inhabits the Namtumbo District in Tanzania’s southern region of Ruvuma.

“I do it in order to give credence and appreciation to those who came THE AFRICA REPORT

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before me. That way, being a people, the Ndendeules cannot be forgotten,” Mbiro says. “It’s for people to know that this tribe exists in this country.”

Inanationofcloseto50millionpeople, Ndedeules number about 100,000. They are one of the smallest groups in the country. “Those who don’t know keep asking me. I take it one person at a time, but since I started this five years ago, I can assure you it’s now more than thousands of people who know [the] Ndendeule.”

Mbiro’s is a conviction born out of concern for the fate of his Ndendeule community, which, like several other small minorities, is crumbling not only under the weight of intermarriages, immigration and the inevitable effects of globalisation, but also because of the linguistic dominance of Kiswahili.

Kiswahili has come a long way since the 7th century AD, when Arab traders arrived on the East African coast, intermarrying with Bantu people to form the unique ethnic group and language now spoken by an estimated 140 million people. While it is official and widely spoken in Tanzania and Kenya, it is limited in neighbouring countries despite efforts to promote the language. In February, Rwanda’s parliament passed a law making it a mandatory study in schools, while Uganda is seeking funds to retrain teachers ahead of making it mandatory.

Kiswahili is also widely spoken in Mozambique, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Comoros,while other pockets of speakers are found in Madagascar, the Seychelles, Réunion Island, South Africa and even

84 ART & LIFE

Ghana, according to the East African Kiswahili Commission (EAKC).

Today Kiswahili is the most widely spoken language in Africa after Arabic, sparking clamour by pan-African agitators for it to be promoted as the continent’s main language. The movement achieved its height in 2004, when the outgoing African Union (AU) chairman, Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano, addressed the body’s summit in Kiswahili, throwing the gathering in Addis Ababa into a state of confusion.

NEGATIVE ASSOCIATIONS

When Victoria Kalule, a Kampala businesswoman, started making trips nearly 700km by road to Nairobi, to acquire merchandise for her shop, she carried with her an Kiswahili-English dictionary, a calculator, and extra cash to pay an interpreter.

“At first it challenged me a lot but I was graduallytaughtbymycustomers.Ilearnt one word at a time as they spoke,” Kalule says. “If I failed to understand, I would pick up my dictionary and show them.”

In Uganda, Kiswahili is despised, both for its perceived slave-trade links and the brutal history of the dictator Idi Amin: it was widely spoken among the armed forces who unleashed terror on

thousands of people. Highlighting the disdain with which the country’s ruling eliteviewthelanguage,KirundaKivejinja, Uganda’s Second Deputy Prime Minister and minister for East African Community affairs, asked at a regional monetary union conference in October: “They want us to speak a language of slavery?”

Indeed, even American TV viewers have been exposed to the language’s brutal associations, thanks to the drama series Quantico. In its second season, a heavily armed group of attackers take delegates hostage at a United Nations meeting, shouting orders in Kiswahili: “Nyinyi nyote nyamazeni” (“Y’all shut up”) and “Lala chini” (“Lie down”) are phrases that many Ugandans who lived under Idi Amin are all too familiar with.

For Stuart Nuwasiima, a Kampala lawyer, Kiswahili spells bad fortune in more practical ways. “I incur more on litigation when I have cases in Kenya and Tanzania because I have to hire an interpreter,” he says. “Sometimes I have been forced to give away cases because of the language barrier.” He adds: “I think the government should make it mandatory teaching for law school and let it be a requirement for attaining a practising licence. That way we shall be forced to learn so we don’t suffer.”

Others are dismissive of efforts to promote the language. “There used to be a time when we were under pressure to do music in Kiswahili so as to penetrate neighbouring countries,” says Benon Mugumbya, a recording executive at Swangz Avenue, one of Uganda’s top music labels. “That pressure is no longer there because we chose authenticity. We shall go global on our own terms, not by pandering to tribes, because music is a universal language,” he says.

Kiswahili’s own intricacies also undermine its case. “With over 12 known official dialects, and others being born, it is a challenge to focus on one at the expense of the others,” says Professor Kenneth Inyani Simala, executive secretary of the EAKC. “There emerges a feeling that focusing on Standard Kiswahili disadvantages the other varieties that are in use in different regions of the [East African] Community,” he says.

TRIALS AT THE BORDER

As a regional lingua franca, Kiswahili was chosen not only to foster unity among East Africa’s diverse societies, it was also to be a pillar of trade. Yet after 10 years in small-scale cross-border trade between Kenya and Uganda, Kalule, a mother of three, says it would make her

Which came first, the Bantu or the Arabic?

IT’S 4PM AT UGANDA’S MAKERERE UNIVERSITY and a group of students are gathered along the walkways of the Institute of Languages, engrossed in conversation. Lecturer Emmanuel Ndyanabo hurries out of the small office he shares with colleagues, carrying a ream of answer sheets. He has rejected requests for an interview, citing bad timing, but suddenly stops to pay attention when he hears the topic is about Kiswahili’s links to Arabs and the slave trade on the East African coast.

“No, no, no,” he protests. “Kiswahili did not come out of the slave trade and intermarriages. History shows us that theory is not true. On the East African coast, there was a Bantu tribe called the Wangozi, and the Arabs learnt their language when they arrived. But because the Arabs came with religion and business, many Arabic words had to be borrowed.”

The question of Kiswahili’s origin baffles many a historian. Is it an Arabic language or a Bantu language? Consensus seems to be growing in support of the latter, with the Arabic theory being seen as a colonialist interpretation.

In an introduction to the language published by Stanford University, which has run Swahili programmes since the 1980s, the author writes: ‘While it is a known fact that languages in contact always influence each other, some people have chosen not to take that into account when commenting about Kiswahili.

For instance, since Arabs are known to have travelled to many parts of the world, why is it that they apparently found it needful to “donate” their language to the East African coast and nowhere else? Were people in the East African coast not communicating among themselves before the arrival of Arabs and other visitors?’

Ndyanabo says the language’s basic vocabulary supports the Bantu theory.

“There are many shared words that show Kiswahili is strongly linked to languages of the hinterland,” he says.

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ART & LIFE 85

life easier if another local language was also selected – perhaps Luganda, she suggests, which is the language of her own ethnic group. Kalule’s language barrier adds to the other challenges she faces: inconsistent tax assessments, unreliable customs-clearing agents, and what she calls outright harassment by authorities in both countries.

These concerns are shared by the World Bank: “A significant amount of cross-border trade takes place between African countries at a small scale and is not measured in official statistics,” says Anabel Gonzalez, senior director for trade and competitiveness global practice at the Bank. “Allowing these traders, many of whom are women, to flourish

and gradually integrate into the formal economy would […] have swift impacts on reducing poverty,” Gonzalez says.

Kenya and Uganda are each other’s largest trade partners. They exchange as much as $1.1bn in goods and services annually, while overall intra-East Africa trade was estimated to be worth $5.5bn annually in 2012, according to the East African Community (EAC) Secretariat.

A popular joke told in East Africa is that Kiswahili was born in Kenya, grew up in Tanzania and died in Uganda. When South Sudan joined the bloc last year, it was said the language would have its funeral in Africa’s youngest state.

Ugandaismakingprogressonaddressing the negative attitudes, debunking

the myth of Kiswahili being a language of brutality and dealing with the fear of displacement by Luganda, the language of the country’s most populous tribe.

At Makerere University, Uganda’s oldest and most prestigious seat of learning, Kiswahili is taught in classes of 60 students. As recently as 2010, these were almost exclusively composed of Kenyans, but the lessons are now snatched up by Ugandans as perceptions about Kiswahili change and its economic importance rises, says Emmanuel Ndyanabo, who lecturers in Kiswahili at the university.

“If someone murders while speaking Kiswahili, it’s not the language that will have committed the crime. It’s the individual,” says Ndyanabo. “The fears of brutality are baseless, they are driven by the selfishness of local tribes.”

ILLUSTRATION BY SÉVERIN MILLET FOR TAR

HEALTHY COMPETITION

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“Regionalisation of Kiswahili is an emerging linguistic phenomenon that now characterises the EAC and Great Lakes Region,” the EAKC’s Simala insists. “The Commission is working hard to make it known that languages in large measure complement each other and should not compete, and if they compete, it should be healthy [competition].”

YetforMbirotheTanzanianlawyer,who wishes it was easier for his Ndendeule community to gainrecognition, concerns remain. In Dar es Salaam, the sprawling economic capital of Tanzania where he lives, Mbiro belongs to a support and development group for the Ndendeule.

At a meeting every month, the 75 members convene at a colleague’s house to share traditional meals and contribute to cultural causes.

“It keeps us close as a people. It’s very important to belong, and this urban group helps us,” says Mbiro, who hasn’t visited his Namtumbo homeland in a long time. “We need our people to emancipate themselves and keep the culture alive through festivals and exhibitions,” he says, noting that Namtumbo, which holds Tanzania’s uranium deposits and is a large tobacco-growing district, also needs more development projects for its people.

Simaladoesnotrefutethat:“[Kiswahili] should not in any way contribute to stifling the growth of other languages,” he says. “The Commission plans to work with stakeholders involved in preserving indigenous languages on how that can be done through research, publication, dissemination and teaching.”

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GIFTS

For mum and dad

With Mother’s and Father’s Day approaching, The Africa Report high-fives grown-up African style with these luxury brands from the continent that make great gifts… or even a treat for you!

Bakchic Made in Morocco, with intricate embroidery and silver Berber finishings, Bakchic accessories make great wardrobe staples.

Snag a colourful clutch to make a casual outfit pop. bakchic.com

Adele Dejak

ZAAF Looking for luggage for a short trip or a stylish laptop case?

Made with quality leather and Ethiopian textiles, ZAAF bags check in with panache. zaafcollection.com

These clear PVC sandals are a great go-to, matching just about any outfit. Bubu Ogisi’s label designs everything from clothes to clothes hangers. iamisigoonline.com

SIMON DEINER/SDR PHOTO

I.am.isigo

Maxhosa by Laduma

DIQUEKU

Based in Kenya, Adele Dejak’s eclectic range of gold, brass, horn, bead, hide and leather jewellery fuses tradition and contemporary for statement pieces sure to lift any outfit. adeledejak.com

Laduma Ngxokolo’s famous shawl with its traditional Xhosa patterns was voted most beautiful item at the 2016 Design Indaba in Cape Town. Also in his range is bright knitwear for men and women, perfect for adding colour in colder climes. www.maxhosa.co.za

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Studio 189 Studio 189 creates a range of ready-to-wear using traditional Ghanaian techniques.

Their suits, casuals and fabulous kimonos can be found on runways in the fashion capital of New York, and in boutiques in Accra and Lagos. studiooneeightynine.com

Studio Hamed Hamed Ouattara’s furniture has found its way into the homes and hearts of many artists and design lovers across the continent. His take on upcycling transforms modest materials into quality products with a vintage twist. studiohamedouattara.com

YSWARA Famed tea specialist YSWARA has now added a line of scented candles to its range. To set the mood why not light one of its African-city named candles like the Abidjan orange and ylang ylang or Nairobi white grapefruit and bergamot for some teatime therapy? yswara.com

Simon and Mary Simon and Mary’s felt hats are revered as some of the best on the continent, worn by celebrities like will.i.am. Mum and dad can get a matching set. www.simonandmary.co.za

Roz’Umy Senegal’s Roz’Umy has fashionforward menswear presenting traditional West African attire with a modern edge for those looking to stand out in the crowd. rozumycouture.com

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No bathroom shelf is complete without a good moisturiser. With blends of sourced ingredients from across the continent – Kenyan moringa oil, marula oil from South Africa, argan oil from Morocco and shea butter from Ghana – Epara’s range is aimed at people of colour. eparaskincare.com

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

SIAKA S. TRAORE

Epara

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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TRAVEL KINSHASA

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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

GWENN DUBOURTHOUMIEU FOR JA

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Toujours la belle

K

inshasa’s cultural output has travelled far and wide. The capital of theDRCisrenownedforitsmusic through the sounds of Koffi Olomide, Papa Wemba, Fally Ipupa and more, while artists like Freddy Tsimba, Albert Lubaki, Cheri Samba and JP Mika appear in major shows and collections in some of the world’s biggest art destinations.

But there’s no need to take a world tour.

While walking through the city you’ll find many ways to indulge in the beauty of Congolese art and creativity.

and children and offers a beautiful showcase of Congolese artists thanks to month-long rolling exhibitions.

During the year you’ll find permanent exhibitions on sustainable development for schools. You can snack in the cafe, stroll in the garden or sharpen your skills in the artist-led workshops.

Utexafrica, 372 avenue Colonel Mondjiba, Gombe +243 818 785 072

For shopping For an art fix

Wenze ya Bikeko (2)

Symphonie des Arts (1)

Wenze ya Bikeko, which means ‘market of statues’ in Lingala, is the main art and craft market of the city, a reference for seekers of unique objects. You’ll find many things to fill your suitcases and bring back as gifts: paintings, sculptures and antiques. Be sure to rise to the occasion and drive a hard bargain.

This art gallery, foundation and cultural centre is a must-do for any art lover, a stunning place with a large collection of jewellery, paintings, sculptures and art objects. Take a walk in the gardens and soak up the outdoor aesthetic. Don’t be surprised if you spot a peacock along the way.

Royal neighbourhood

15 avenue de l’Avenir, Kintambo +243 819 901 000

For nightlife

Espace Texaf Bilembo

Kwilu Bar

The Texaf-Bilembo centre has a wide range of activities for both adults

Nightlife is part of the rhythm of Kinshasa. The Kwilu Bar has quickly

built a strong reputation in the city and has become a mandatory stop for young Congolese out on the town.

You’ll hear some local artists but be ready for international music as well. Out in the open air the easy-going vibe will see you enjoying amazing cocktails and dancing the night away. On weekdays the bar is quieter and could be the perfect place for a romantic tête-à-tête.

3 avenue de la Justice facebook.com/Newkwilubar/

A respite from the city Jardin d’Eden An hour’s drive from Kinshasa, this local beauty spot lives up to its name.

An island on the N’sele River, it’s the perfect place to recharge your batteries after the buzz of Kinshasa.

Relax, stroll along the river, go on a hike, or dine on delicious barbecued meats and local dishes. With accommodation available you may even want to stay for a night or two. avenue Delmo, village Mombele, Kindobo jardin-eden.populus.org

Syra Sylla in Kinshasa THE AFRICA REPORT

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TRENDHUNTER STORIES THAT MAKE SENSE ‘I have a very special head/A special head of hair…’ These are the first lines of My Special Hair, a book by Candice Dingwall and Jess Jardim-Wedepohl that joyously celebrates black hair through rhyme and illustrations.

Finding books whose stories and characters reflect the society we live in is still a challenge for parents and teachers in South Africa, where the books on offer are often one-dimensional with stories only reflecting Western and white preoccupations.

Book Dash aims to change that with a revolutionary approach. Not only do its books reflect diversity and the richness of African culture but they are open-licenced: free for anyone to translate, download and distribute.

What’s more, each book is produced in a single day, in a thrilling creative atmosphere.

Tumi Goes to the Park (by Paballo Rampa and Nyambura Kariuki, pictured above) and My Special Hair are two of 11 books produced at the 25 February Jozi Book Dash, where 50 volunteer creatives got together to write, illustrate, design and publish the books. Books from earlier events have already been translated into several African languages including isiNdebele, isiXhosa and Setswana.

Another group that has been excluded is teenagers. Cape Town-based Cover2Cover saw the gap. Publisher Palesa Morudu says their paperbacks have short chapters written for teenagers who speak English as a second language. Fiction storylines focus on issues young people are faced with in the country, while the Face2Face imprint publishes nonfiction about inspirational South Africans.

Both publishers aim to increase reading by making books relevant, or, as Book Dash programme director, Julia Norrish says, “to change South Africa’s reading culture”. Book Dash’s ambition is to ensure each child in the country has 100 books by the age of five.

Crystal Orderson in Cape Town THE AFRICA REPORT

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Mr Eazi

With a string of singles and his latest mixtape Accra to Lagos, Mr Eazi straddles the cultural divide between Nigeria and Ghana

If you were not a musician what would you be?

I am already an entrepreneur running a tech business called phonetrader.ng, so I guess that’s the answer.

Why do they call you a kubolor?

Kubolor is a term in Ghana used to describe free-spirited bohemians that like to travel and explore new horizons. And I tick all the boxes.

What city feels most like home to you?

Lagos, of course, but home-awayfrom-home I’ll say Accra.

If you were elected president today, what would be your first decision?

Probably to create an enabling environment for business owners and prospective business owners, which would play a key role in alleviating unemployment and poverty in the long run.

What’s your fave rap verse?

Ermmm, it has to be lil’ Wayne’s verse on Drake’s ‘Miss Me’. Every line was a punchline.

What’s your favourite TV show?

Game of Thrones.

What’s your favourite sports team?

Barcelona. If I have to pick two players, Ronaldinho and Messi.

Which famous deceased person would you like to bring back for a chat?

John D. Rockefeller.

OBI SOMTO

NYAMBURA KARIUKI/BOOKDASH.ORG

ART & LIFE 89

Interview by Eromo Egbejule

SUNDAY ALAMBA/AP/SIPA

90

Faster and sharper Jamoru is a black-market fuel dealer in Lagos, working in the streets day and night to power the lives of his more privileged counterparts

W

hen I was 14, I dropped out of senior secondary school to help my elder brother hawk music CDs in Lagos traffic. The school had gone on strike again because the government refused to pay teachers more money and my mother was tired of seeing me at home idle. She was always picking quarrels with me over little things, so one evening when my brother returned close to midnight, I asked him if I could join him. I was 17 when I started selling black-market fuel, and a year later I left home in Oshodi to stay with other friends here in Jakande.

Selling things to Lagosians is like surviving in life. You have to be fast so nobody cheats you and so that you take an opportunity before your next man does. You learn to be a friend and competition at the same time to people around you. I probably should represent Nigeria in an Olympic race because I know I’ve grown faster and sharper than all the ones they have now.

As you are selling, you have to watch your back so no one steals your fuel and because police can come at any time. Police and the Nigerian Security Civil Defence Corps like to show their authority with us, instead of chasing proper criminals. They collect bribes either in cash or as fuel, and on some days, God forbid, they collect both. You have to be sharp.

I’ll tell you a story. One time, I was selling to this fine woman. Very yellow like pawpaw. The type of woman that I know is not my type but I’d marry when I hammer (make money). I think it’s my daydreaming that made me lose guard. Police actually then caught me. This woman then did the best thing ever. She pleaded with them to let me go. She actually cried then proceeded to pay ransom they asked from me. When I was released I asked her to go with the petrol, just like that. I couldn’t bear to ask her for money. But she refused and dropped the money for me. And left. I almost cried that evening.

Selling fuel brings more profit than selling CDs. I make about N3,000 on both the keg and fuel. I sometimes feel guilty for praying for fuel scarcity but you know we have to survive. Not everybody likes to buy music to jam in their car or at home but everybody in this country needs fuel. You need fuel for generator, you need fuel for car, you need fuel for barbing salon, you need fuel for your children to sleep well at night. You know there’s no light and some people can’t sleep like that? It’s not like the rest of us that sleep in the darkness; we that sell the fuel don’t do anything with it.

Eromo Egbejule in Lagos THE AFRICA REPORT

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